


The Adventures of a Single Girl in London (Plus a Consulting Detective)

by earlgreytea68



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fix-it fic, M/M, Miscarriage, dealing with the miscarriage, in probably not a totally realistic way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:29:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes keeps choosing flatmates who fancy themselves to be bloggers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here is how I feel about seasons of this show: I feel like I've invited a couple of friends over, and basically they play with my toys and make this huge mess, and when they leave I'm like, "Damn it, now I have to clean this all up." 
> 
> Here's my clean-up. It's not the first fix-it fic I've written this hiatus (I KNOW, RIGHT?), and it probably won't be my last (I need another really long hiatus, honestly; I need to get as much done as I can before they make a mess again). I am, however, absurdly pleased with the premise of this one. I felt like, if I didn't do it, someone else would, and quickly, so this fic basically ate my brain for ten days or so. 
> 
> It's a fairly Mary-neutral fic (I think she has three lines in the whole thing?), but it's as Mary-neutral as a fic can get when the endgame is John/Sherlock. Don't let the character list for this chapter fool you on that point. Also, the timeline on this show is a mess. I went with the blog, which puts John and Mary's wedding at the end of July, instead of the show, which has it in mid-May. 
> 
> Important announcement! This fic has a playlist! You can find it here: http://earlgreytea68.tumblr.com/post/75393538625/this-mix-is-what-i-listened-to-while-writing-the. You can also find playlists now for The Bang & the Clatter (http://earlgreytea68.tumblr.com/post/75392768560/this-playlist-is-schizophrenic-then-again-so-is) (it jumps from Tchaikovsky to "Dirty Water" and I find that strangely appropriate for the fic) and an in-flux one for Nature & Nurture (http://earlgreytea68.tumblr.com/post/74514899759/the-songs-ive-listened-to-while-writing-this) (because it's still being written). 
> 
> Thank you, as usual, to flawedamythyst for the Britpick and arctacuda for the beta. They both have made this fic better.
> 
> Translated into Italian! http://www.efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=2760694&i=1

Chapter One

_January 17, 2015_

_For a little while just now I lived in a cottage in Sussex. I thought it was going to be relaxing, like a permanent spa day. Turns out? COTTAGES IN SUSSEX DON’T COME WITH MASSEUSES AND INCENSE AND CUCUMBER WATER. I even apparently had to bring my own New Age music with me if I wanted it. Appalling!_

_So, after a bit of being bored out of my mind, I thought to myself, J, it’s time for some adventure. You know where you should go? You should go back to London._

_I decided to be impulsive about it, because why not? What’s the fun in having an adventure in London if it doesn’t start with you showing up on a random friend’s doorstep in London with a suitcase stuffed full of jogging bottoms and Jaffa Cakes. (I have a Jaffa Cake problem, okay? I don’t travel without them. DON’T JUDGE ME.)_

_“Hello,” I said, when my friend answered the door. (Okay, his landlady answered the door because my friend had put the doorbell in the oven because he hates doorbells and actually I agree with him and I’m liking living in a place that basically has a 24/7 concierge. But eventually my friend opened his flat door.) “Hello,” I said. “Have you got any cucumber water?”_

_“Why is your suitcase full of Jaffa Cakes?” said Shezza. He does things like that, looks at your suitcase and knows what’s in it._

_“Do you have any Jaffa Cakes here?” I asked._

_Shezza seemed to consider the question. “No,” he said, finally. “But I do have a fresh sample of taste buds.”_

_(Don’t worry, you lot: Shezza’s not a murderer.)_

_I said, “That’s why my suitcase is full of Jaffa Cakes. Can I crash here for a bit?”_

_Shezza said, “What happened in Sussex?”_

_I said, “They don’t have cucumber water.”_

_He said, “Will you keep the kitchen stocked with Jaffa Cakes?”_

_I said, “Yes, but I’m not making you tea all the time.”_

_He said, “That’s fine, I’ve mostly switched over to coffee anyway.”_

_And that’s how I ended up living here._

***

“You’re not living here,” said Sherlock and looked over at Janine, who was sitting on the sofa, eating one of her perpetual Jaffa Cakes and flipping through a tedious tabloid. 

“No. Not permanently,” she agreed, without looking up. “Just until you stop being lonely.”

“Don’t pretend you’re here for _me_ ,” sniffed Sherlock. “Just because you didn’t understand that cottages don’t come equipped with sexy pool boys.”

“I would have settled for any pool boy,” said Janine, and flashed a smile at him. 

“We need to work on your standards, Janine.”

“I know. You’re going to be a great wingman.”

“Don’t call me Shezza,” said Sherlock. 

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. On your blog.”

“Oh, that.” Janine smiled at him again. Janine was always smiling. Sherlock found it infuriating. “That’s your blogonym.”

“That’s not a word.”

“I thought you’d prefer it to ‘Sherl.’ Since ‘Sherl’ is our special pet name.” There was that smile again. 

“I need to find you a pool boy so you’ll move in with him and leave my flat in peace.”

“You’d weep over the lack of Jaffa Cakes in your kitchen.”

“I am capable of buying my own Jaffa Cakes.”

“No, you are evidently not. Anyway, I’m staying here until _you_ find a pool boy, so that I can be sure you won’t get lonely and do something mad like shoot another powerful newspaperman.”

“I had reasons for that,” said Sherlock. 

“Yeah. Mad, lonely reasons. But we won’t discuss the elephant in the room. Speaking of, did you like the blog?”

“Why do all my flatmates suffer the delusion that they know how to write?”

“You tell me, Sherlock,” said Janine. “Since you choose us.”

Sherlock looked at Janine’s blog entry and said, “Yes. I do, don’t I?”

And then he left a comment on the blog. 

_You’re not living here. –Shezza_

***

_January 24, 2015_

_Day 1 of Operation Pool Boy_

_We call it that, but actually I don’t want a pool boy. I want Prince Harry. Shezza says I wouldn’t like Prince Harry because he weeps during sex and I like men who are more dominant in bed. I don’t believe him about Prince Harry. (I’m keeping mum on the rest of it.)_

_Since Shezza refuses to go out and get me Prince Harry, I decided we may as well start where all these things start: at a pub. Shezza got me a very precise amount of beer—not a pint, some special measurement he’d calculated just for me—and said that I was to drink it all in not more than fifteen minutes._

_I said, “Are you trying to get me drunk?”_

_Shezza said, “Yes.”_

_This is how our conversations go a lot of the time._

_I have no objection to getting drunk, so I started in on my beer-that-wasn’t-a-pint while Shezza scanned the room._

_“Any likely victims?” I asked._

_“Everyone in this room would be tremendously simple to kill,” said Shezza._

_“Right,” I said, “but what about shag?”_

_“Much harder. That’s why you’re meant to be drinking that beer. If you’re drunk, the odds of someone being acceptable to you will increase.”_

_“You understand I can’t be drunk all the time, right?” I said. “Eventually I’m going to have to be sober, and if I can’t stand my husband, what good will it do me to be married to him?”_

_“You’ll be fine,” said Shezza. “You’d be amazed the things that married people are able to forgive.”_

***

Sherlock was supposed to be pretending to be a 73-year-old with seven cats, four parakeets, and three goldfish on a dating Internet forum for a client. But the gold diggers on the forum were so far boring and not the particular person he was trying to smoke out, so Sherlock furtively clicked over to Janine’s blog. 

And then he stood and took his laptop and marched into the kitchen, where Janine was doing the crossword. 

“What is this?” he demanded. 

“My computer,” said Janine, without interest. “You know, the one you’re not supposed to be on? Probably why you’re confused as to what it is.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and said, “ _This_ ,” and pointed to the screen. 

Janine looked at it and brightened. “Oh, yeah. I changed the theme. The other one was too pink. Do you like it?”

“This is only half the story.”

“Nope. I didn’t like the pink. Whole story. Don’t try to deduce anything more out of that one.”

“The _entry_. You’ve only told half the story.”

“I thought it had come to a good stopping point.” 

“There’s nothing in there about how I introduced you to that nice man with the ginger hair.”

“He never rang me.”

“Not my fault. I found you the most eligible candidate in that pub. What if people are trying to keep score at home? They won’t know that I found you someone.”

“Because you didn’t, really.”

“Yes, I did,” Sherlock insisted. “You chatted him up all night. You liked him.”

“Yeah, and then he didn’t bloody call me.”

“Not my fault. Once he walked out of the pub, other variables came into play. He might have been hit by a lorry. In fact, I’m going to ring Molly and see if—”

“You are not calling morgues just to try to keep a perfect record on my men.”

“And you didn’t mention in here how I deduced that the couple behind us was about to get engaged after knowing each other only two weeks, and then they did.”

“Why would I have mentioned that? It didn’t have anything to do with _me_. That’s what my blog is about.”

“John always told people the whole story. He never cut it off in the middle like this.” Sherlock said it and was surprised at himself but refused to let it show. But they never mentioned John by name. Janine always referred to him as _the elephant in the room_. Sherlock never referred to him at all. He refused to acknowledge that it was the first time John’s name had crossed his lips in weeks. 

Janine just said, “I am not John Watson. His blog was about _you_.”

***

_January 29, 2015_

_Day 6 of Operation Rich Barrister_

_Shezza says I didn’t tell you lot the full story last time. Fine. Here’s the full story: Shezza found me a fit ginger (he thinks ginger’s my type because of Prince Harry; he’s missing the obvious deduction that “royalty” is my type). Anyway, I had a really nice conversation with the fit ginger and gave him my number and then he never rang me._

_Men, right?_

_Shezza has the following explanations for why Fit Ginger hasn’t called me:_

_• Fit Ginger has been hit by a lorry. If you run a morgue and a fit ginger has come in, please let me know in the comments._  
• Fit Ginger has lost his mobile. I say this indicates carelessness and Shezza shouldn’t have found him to be a suitable candidate if he’s careless. When I pointed that out, Shezza amended the scenario to:   
• Fit Ginger’s mobile has been stolen. If you stole the mobile of a fit ginger, feel free to give me a call. I’m in his mobile under “Sexy Brunette.”   
• Fit Ginger has been kidnapped. In which case, if you know a fit ginger who’s missing, let me know, because I know a detective who can find him. 

_Given the failure of day 1 of the operation, we decided to give it another go last night. We chose a different pub, because Shezza said that the last pub I chose was full of “degenerates and wastrels.”_

_When he said that, I said, “And here I thought it was just full of average Londoners.”_

_Shezza said, “Exactly.”_

_So I let him choose last night’s pub. Of course he chose the poshest place you can pick short of a private club. Everyone there was at least three decades older than us and they were all drinking sherry._

_“Seriously?” I said to him._

_“Go up to the bar and order a sherry and tell the man whose coat has a bright purple lining that you like cricket,” he said._

_“I don’t like cricket,” I pointed out, because I thought that was probably a relevant point._

_“Why is that relevant?” said Shezza. “At some point in the near future, we’re going to have a discussion about how we shouldn’t waste our time talking about irrelevant things.”_

_Sherry with a weird old man in a purple coat seemed better than listening to that lecture, so I went and ordered the drink, even though I don’t like sherry. And I found the bloke and I said, “I like cricket,” even though I don’t like cricket._

_And you know what? He was really nice and Shezza is bloody annoying when he’s smug._

_But the man was still thirty years too old for me, which I pointed out._

_Shezza said he was gathering data._

_I think it was all a set-up and Shezza just needed me to talk to that bloke to confirm his cricket alibi for some murder or something._

_ Comments _

_I thought I knew everything about ridiculous blogs, but you have managed to lower the bar. –Shezza_

_Janine, dear, some of the men who play cricket are very fit. I’ll come up and show you. –Mrs. Hudson_

_Can we plan this visit for when I’m not in the flat? –Shezza_

_No. –J_

***

Mrs. Hudson came up with a plate of biscuits. She stopped and dropped some off with Sherlock in the kitchen, who grunted what might have been a thank you without looking up from the microscope he was peering through. On the table in neat little piles were a variety of fingers: a pile of thumbs, a pile of index fingers, etc. 

Mrs. Hudson went into the sitting room, where Janine was sitting with neat little piles of her own. Nail varnish, Mrs. Hudson saw. 

“Part of the finger experiment?” asked Mrs. Hudson, settling onto the sofa. 

“Yes,” said Janine, turning on the telly for them. “He’s investigating the rate of wear on different nail varnish brands, or something. I said we could do this experiment using my live fingers, but he said it would take too long. And there’s something about needing to know by finger type, too.” Janine shrugged. 

“Where did he get all the fingers?” asked Mrs. Hudson. 

“Molly, of course.”

Sherlock stuck his head out of the kitchen. “It is very _loud_ in here,” he said, disapprovingly, and looked meaningfully at the telly. 

“We’re watching the cricket,” said Janine. 

“Again? How often is cricket played?”

“How often do you think cricket is played?” asked Janine. 

“I thought it was just once a year but clearly it is not,” grumbled Sherlock. 

“An annual Great Cricket Game?” said Janine. 

“Yes.”

“It’s played more frequently than that.”

“Clearly. Must you watch it constantly, though?”

“Mrs. Hudson’s right. The men are fit.”

“It’s true, dear,” said Mrs. Hudson to Sherlock, wisely. 

“If you watched it with us, you could gather data. And then you could get both of us hot blokes.”

“It is bad enough that you have simplified the complicated science of deduction for use as a _dating service_ ,” huffed Sherlock. “I’m not doing it for _both_ of you.”

“So far, the complicated science of deduction is pretty rubbish as a dating service,” remarked Janine. 

Sherlock drew himself up grandly and said, “I have data to collect.”

“Where?” asked Janine. 

“Not in this flat,” said Sherlock and disappeared back into the kitchen. 

“Bring back milk!” Janine called after him. 

“Absolutely not!” Sherlock called back, and then they heard the door close. 

Janine grouped together a pile of jade green nail varnishes and said, “He never gets the milk.”

“That’s just him. Don’t mind him. He likes you a great deal.”

“Oh, I know,” said Janine, cheerfully, and looked up at Mrs. Hudson to flash her a smile, and was surprised to see that Mrs. Hudson looked almost tearful. “Oh, no, Mrs. Hudson,” she said. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, just…I am _so_ glad the two of you worked it out, dear.”

“You know we’re not together?” Janine said, carefully. “I mean, not the way you’re thinking?”

"You're not?"

“No. We’re just friends. He sleeps on the sofa and everything.”

“He sleeps on the _sofa_?” Mrs. Hudson looked down at it, as if suddenly alarmed to find she was sitting on Sherlock’s bed. 

“Well, I stole his bedroom. He almost never sleeps, and I told him it was the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“The flat has two bedrooms,” Mrs. Hudson pointed out.

Janine gave her a look. “Do you think he’d ever in a million years let anyone use John’s room but John?”

Mrs. Hudson, after a moment, gave a little sigh. “I will never understand Sherlock Holmes’s love life.”

“Frankly, I think he probably prefers it that way,” admitted Janine. She glanced at the cricket for a moment, and then turned to Mrs. Hudson. Because now was one of her few opportunities, she thought. “Do you know what happened between them?”

“Between John and Sherlock?”

“He never mentions him. Every once in a while it slips out and he looks annoyed at himself. From this I deduce that he must think about him constantly. I’m sure Sherlock thinks he’s being very clever but he wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to John Watson. But in all the time I’ve been here, John’s never even _rung_ him. What was the falling out? Did Sherlock tell him how he felt and John thought it would be kinder to just cut him out entirely? If I knew what I was dealing with, I’d be a lot more effective in trying to help Sherlock get over it.”

“Well, you know what happened. He faked his own death and then John married someone else.”

“I know that much from the newspapers, Mrs. Hudson.”

“I don’t know what else happened between them,” said Mrs. Hudson, sadly. “You know by now. Sherlock would rather die than have a real, honest conversation about anything like that.” 

“Well,” said Janine, reflectively. “I can see that. I’ve never believed it does you any good to talk about a broken heart. It won’t change the fact that it’s broken. I just worry I won’t be able to fix it.”

“That’s nothing to do with you, dear. I’m not sure it’s possible for Sherlock Holmes to get over John Watson. I think you’re doing the best you can do, because he’s not lonely. He was so sad, and so lonely, and so depressed. I worried about him constantly. I even called in his brother, because I was worried… _you_ know.” Mrs. Hudson gave Janine a meaningful look that meant _drugs_. Janine had received a lecture herself from Mycroft about the drugs. “And then you came back, and there was someone here with him, and he likes you a great deal, and he takes an interest in things again. You gave him a mission. I think it’s the best we can hope for right now.”

“Yeah,” Janine agreed. Because she did think it was true. Sherlock liked her and liked the pub visits and spent less time brooding in misery in his chair, staring at an empty space on the sitting room floor where Janine suspected the armchair stuffed into John Watson’s bedroom had once sat. 

Mrs. Hudson said, “You really care about him, don’t you?”

“Well,” said Janine. “We who are unlucky in love need to stick together.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

_February 10, 2015_

_Day 18 of Operation Tortured Artist_

_Shezza still has not succeeded in finding me an appropriate boyfriend. Shezza has decided this is my fault._

_“You must be bad at the chatting-up portion of the evening,” Shezza decided._

_“You must be bad at the choosing-compatible-men portion of the evening,” I said._

_Shezza ignored that. “I am going to stay with you tonight for the chatting-up part.”_

_“You don’t think that’s going to be awkward? Having a third wheel there?”_

_“I need the data. I’ll be sure to find a mediocre candidate so as not to ruin your chances with a genuinely good man.”_

_“Cheers for that,” I said._

_Have you ever tried to flirt with someone while someone else sits next to you and takes notes and makes judgmental little snorts after basically every sentence? I was ready to dump my pint over Shezza’s head._

_And then the bloke I was supposed to be chatting up looked at the pair of us and said, “So you’re thinking threesome, then?”_

_The memory of Shezza’s face in reaction to that question is my most cherished possession._

***

“What is that?” Sherlock asked, when Janine came home with the box. 

Janine beamed at him and said, “It’s a Wii.”

“It’s a plural personal pronoun?” said Sherlock, raising an eyebrow. 

“Don’t be a twat,” said Janine and went over to the television. “It’s a video game console.”

“Because you don’t do enough pointless things?”

“What are you doing right now?” asked Janine. 

Sherlock glanced down at the Twitter window he had open on Janine’s laptop. “I’m tracking down the whereabouts of a ruthless kidnapper of puppies using nothing but my knowledge of the decomposition rates of different species of pine needles.”

“You’re running your Thoughts of Vacant Londoners Twitter, aren’t you?”

Sherlock looked at the latest tweet he’d sent. _Should I go to this Starbucks or that Starbucks? How will I ever decide? O, the choices of this complex world!_

He said, “No, I’m not.”

“Puppy-napper, Sherlock?”

“Well, it was worth a try,” said Sherlock, and carefully deleted his browser history before closing the laptop. 

Janine had pulled the television out a bit so that she could peer behind it. After a moment of frowning, she turned back to Sherlock, who lifted his eyebrows at her. 

“Sherlock,” she said. “You know how you’re a genius?”

“I do, yes,” Sherlock agreed. 

“Can you prove it and set up my Wii for me?”

“I never agreed to have a we or a she or a he or a they in this flat. You watch far too much telly as it is.”

“You don’t know how to set it up, do you?”

“Of course I know how to set it up.”

“Prove it.”

Sherlock sighed. “I don’t need to—”

“It’s fine to admit you don’t know things when you don’t know things.”

“Janine,” huffed Sherlock, standing. “ _Honestly_. You’re behaving as if this is a matter of quantum physics. There are a limited number of wires that can make a limited number of connections. Step aside.”

***

_February 18, 2015_

_Our television is stuck on a channel called Psychic Today. Shezza insists that he absolutely meant to do that._

_In news that is definitely related, I have decided that Shezza is offering fifty quid to anyone who can come and get our entertainment system working again._

_ Comments _

_Correction: I am offering fifty quid and a free Youu. –Shezza_

_It’s a Wii. –J_

***

The e-mail was from Mike Stamford. It was out of the blue, and the subject line was “Have you seen this?” and John thought that maybe it was some sort of ridiculous YouTube video and wondered why Mike would suddenly get in touch with him just because of some cat slicing a banana or something. 

John clicked the e-mail open, curious. It read, in its entirety: 

_Hello, John – I hope everything’s going well with you! I read this story today on the Internet and laughed so hard I cried. Everyone here at work thinks I’ve lost my mind, so I’m sharing it with you so that you can agree with me that this is absolutely hilarious._

_Cheers,  
Mike_

There was a link pasted after Mike’s name, and John clicked on it curiously. 

It brought him to a webpage with the blaring headline, _Sherlock Holmes’s Lover Starts a New Blog_. John blinked at the headline. Took several minutes to process it. Then he read the story. Twice. 

_Remember when Sherlock Holmes’s girlfriend Janine told every tabloid who would listen about what a fabulous lover the sexy, sometimes-dead-sometimes-alive hat detective is? Well, Janine’s back to oversharing her exploits with Shezza, only this time it’s all in the name of getting her a new boyfriend. The sex life in Baker Street seems to be as complicated and steamy as ever! Check out Janine’s blog for all the details of their pub crawls together. It’s a pretty good read. That Sherlock Holmes, eh? Not happy unless he’s got someone out there blogging about his every move! Well, we don’t mind! We’re happy John Watson’s been so wittily replaced so we can get our deerstalker fix!_

On his third read-through of the short article, John thought he could make a list of the details his mind froze on. Janine? The sex life at Baker Street? Pub crawls? Wittily replaced? _Shezza_?

John told himself that when he clicked the link for Janine’s blog he was not annoyed. 

Mary poked her head in. “John?”

“Yeah,” said John, without looking away from Janine’s blog. _Mrs. Hudson was commenting on it. Sherlock was calling himself Shezza_. Had the entire world lost its mind? 

“I’ve been ringing for your next patient, didn’t you hear?”

“Did you know about this?” John asked, suddenly. 

“Know about what?” Mary moved into the room, looking curiously at his computer screen. 

“Did you know that Janine is…something…with Sherlock?”

“No, I thought that ended badly. Didn’t it? I mean, she sold all those lies about him to the tabloids.”

“Well,” remarked John, because he couldn’t help it. “One thing we know is that Sherlock doesn’t hold grudges.”

***

_February 23, 2015_

_Day 31 of Operation Hot Stockbroker_

_After a discussion that may or may not have involved a lot of wine (if you chose “may,” you win!), Shezza and I reached a mutual decision that the problem is all pubs everywhere._

_“Pubs promote mindless drinking,” Shezza said, spilling wine from his wine glass as he waved it all around._

_“I thought you said I needed mindless drinking in order to find someone acceptable,” I said._

_“Dating isn’t mindless,” said Shezza. “You need your mind to date. Wait. Do you? Do people use their minds when they date?”_

_“Not usually, no,” I said, spilling a little bit of wine myself. “And that’s the sodding problem with everyone, innit?”_

_“Yes,” said Shezza, punctuating his agreement with more wine spilling. “People do not use their minds enough! Their tiny, little brains. Miniscule brains. How much effort would it be to use such a minute thing as the ordinary brain? And yet people can’t be bothered! I hate people.”_

_“Me, too,” I said._

_“You don’t seriously want to date one of those people, do you?”_

_“Well, I don’t want to date one of the *people* people. I want to date a *good* people. Person. You know.”_

_“You know where you find good people?” said Shezza._

_“Online?” I guessed._

_“In parks,” said Shezza._

_Which I wouldn’t have expected, but we decided to give the park a try._

_Granted, we were both slightly hungover, and it was far too bright for me to bother opening my eyes to try to see anyone who might be around._

_Eventually Shezza said, “How do you feel about dating geese?”_

_I said, “I don’t feel good about it.”_

_Shezza said, “Whose idea was this?”_

_I said, “Yours.”_

_He said, “It definitely wasn’t mine.”_

_I said, “You said you meet good people in parks.”_

_He said, “*I* don’t meet good people in parks. *Other people* meet good people in parks. I got that wrong. We’re at the wrong place. We should go to the hospital.”_

_I said, “We’re not *that* hungover.”_

_Shezza said, “Sure you don’t want to date a goose? That one likes you.”_

_I said, “You can’t deduce geese.”_

_Shezza said, “Don’t put any of this in your blog.”_

_ Comments _

_I didn’t spill any wine, I wasn’t hungover, it wasn’t my idea, and I told you not to put this in your blog. –Shezza_

_So J has also discovered what a lightweight you are? –Greg_

_Who’s this? –Shezza_

_He should have signed it Godfrey. –J_

_Oh, of course. –Shezza_

_I’m not a lightweight. –Shezza_

***

John had been intending to stop by and see Sherlock for ages now. It was one of those things where the longer you went without doing it, the weirder it seemed for you to do it, so that now he felt like, no matter when he stopped by Baker Street, it was going to seem like an incredibly awkward thing for him to be doing. He wasn’t sure how he had let it go so long in the first place. His life lately felt like it blinked and another month of nursery-painting and car-seat-comparing had gone by without him being aware of it. 

He definitely didn’t decide to finally stop by Baker Street because he couldn’t get Janine’s annoying blog out of his head. He was dropping by because sometimes it was nice to check up on old friends. That was just something nice that nice people like John Watson did sometimes. 

Plus, he was a little worried about Sherlock, he decided. Everything in Janine's blog seemed unlike Sherlock Holmes. Janine was either spreading more lies around about Sherlock or Sherlock was okay with mindlessly hanging out at pubs and being called “Shezza.” Which John had only ever heard used in connection with a high Sherlock, so yes, Sherlock definitely needed checking up on. And John acknowledged the twinge of guilt that he should have checked up on him long before this. Sherlock, he reminded himself, was quite capable of taking care of himself, had done it for two years without any Watson interference. 

Mrs. Hudson answered the door. From 221B floated down the unmistakable sound of yelling. 

“John!” cried Mrs. Hudson, with a delight that soothed John a little bit. “How lovely to see you.”

“How are you, Mrs. Hudson?” he asked, and kissed her cheek and tried not to be distracted by the argument going on above them. 

“Oh, you know. The hip still gives me a bit of bother, but Janine’s been teaching me yoga. It’s been doing a world of good.”

“Yeah,” John said, pretending like Janine wasn’t the entire reason he’d come by. “Are they, um, having a row?” He tried to sound neutral about that, neither disturbed nor pleased by it. 

“Oh, goodness, no!” Mrs. Hudson tittered at him. “They never row, those two, not really. Not the way you and Sherlock would.”

John wanted to say that that wasn’t true, but it was definitely true that there had been lots of times when he had wanted to throw Sherlock through a wall in frustration with him. But it didn’t matter, thought John. It didn’t mean Sherlock and Janine’s friendship was better than his friendship with John had been. This wasn’t about whose friendship was better. This wasn’t a _competition_. 

“You should go up,” Mrs. Hudson continued. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

John wanted to say _Of course he’ll be happy to see me_ , but he wasn’t so sure. He hesitated on the staircase, listened to the shouting over his head, and then thought he was behaving like an idiot. He gave Mrs. Hudson a reassuring smile, since she was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind, and then headed up the stairs. 

He thought that any minute now Sherlock would recognize his tread on the stairs and the argument would cease, but the voices kept sniping at each other. Mrs. Hudson was wrong, thought John. This was definitely a row. 

Which was confirmed by the first clear sentence John heard, which was Sherlock exclaiming, “Why would you do that? We had a plan! You should have just executed the plan!”

And then Janine responded with, “I’m sorry but I was busy dealing with the killer bird that was coming after me!”

John paused on the landing. Killer bird?

“It’s not a _killer bird_ ,” retorted Sherlock, scathingly. 

That sounded like Sherlock, thought John, relieved, and resumed moving. 

Then Sherlock added, “It’s a turtle with wings! Obviously!”

John blinked and paused again. Because that definitely didn’t sound like Sherlock. 

“And the plan was for you to deal with it!” continued Sherlock. “I was busy dealing with the cloud throwing red spikes.”

John finally reached the doorway, and stared in shock at the tableau in front of him. Janine was sitting on the desk and Sherlock was sitting on the back of his chair and they were both fixated on the television, on which they appeared to be…playing a video game. 

“Your plan was a terrible plan,” Janine told Sherlock. “Now we’re both dead. You should have handled the bird, you had bullets.”

“It was a _turtle_ with _wings_ , and I didn’t have bullets, I had _balls_ of _fire_.”

“Oh,” said Janine, turning so she could pick up a glass of wine next to her on the desk, “you’re suddenly the expert on terminology for—” Janine caught sight of him standing in the doorway and said, in surprise, “John.”

John started to greet her. 

And then Sherlock fell off the back of his chair. 

Both John and Janine looked at him in surprise, as he immediately regained his feet and straightened his suit jacket and said, “John. Hi. Hello.”

John cocked his head at him in confusion. He felt as if he had walked into some opposite world version of 221B. None of this was making any sense to him. “Hi.”

“I didn’t know you were coming,” Sherlock said. “Did you say you were coming?” He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and looked at it. “You didn’t text.”

“No, just stopped by on a whim.”

“Oh,” said Sherlock, and sounded confused. 

“Wine?” offered Janine, leaning back on the desk so she could lift the bottle. 

“No, John prefers tea,” said Sherlock, before John could say anything at all, and then Sherlock scurried into the kitchen. 

John looked at Janine and felt awkward. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Janine shrugged and sipped her wine. “We weren’t getting anywhere. His Wii strategies are rubbish.”

Sherlock re-appeared and said, “There’s an in-progress experiment on the table that I can’t disturb.” 

“Go to Speedy’s,” suggested Janine. 

John thought this was a brilliant idea, since he wanted to get away from this strange 221B that no longer felt like home. “Yes,” he agreed. 

Sherlock nodded and reached for his coat. 

John followed Sherlock down the stairs and into Speedy's and they got their teas and sat silently. John watched Sherlock fuss with the sugar and tried to remember how they used to talk, all the time, and it had never been awkward. 

“So how are you?” said John, finally, and then wanted to kick himself for how stupid that sounded. 

“Good,” said Sherlock, still fiddling with the sugar.

John was silent for a beat, trying to think of what to say next that wasn’t, _You let that woman move into Baker Street and write a blog about you?_

Sherlock said, “And how are Mary and the baby?”

“They’re both good,” said John. “Both looking forward to having it over with, I think.”

“Having what over with?” asked Sherlock, blankly. 

John lifted his eyebrows at this uncharacteristic confusion. “The pregnancy.”

“It’s not over yet?”

“No,” said John. It did not surprise him that Sherlock had not bothered to remember his baby’s due date. But… “Did you think I wouldn’t have rung you to tell you if the baby had been born?”

Sherlock shrugged and glanced at the person who had just stepped up to the counter. “He’s in stocks, you know. He’s only dressed like a tramp because he thinks it helps him overhear good tips. It’s stupid of him, it doesn’t work.” Sherlock sipped his tea. 

“Is that the kind of thing you deduce for Janine when you two go out to pubs?” asked John, and almost winced. Had that sounded jealous?

Sherlock was silent for a second. “It’s just the kind of thing I deduce,” he said, eventually, his attention back on the sugar. He sounded sad suddenly, which made John’s heart twist a bit. 

“Sherlock, are you all right?” John asked. 

“I’m fine,” said Sherlock, briskly. 

“You’d tell me if you were…” John sighed. “No, obviously you wouldn’t bloody tell me, you’ve already proved that.”

“If this is about the drugs, you needn’t worry. Janine’s already been well-briefed. She’s on Mycroft’s payroll.”

John’s lips twitched; he couldn’t help it. “Does she split the fee with you?”

Sherlock snorted. “You obviously don’t know Janine very well.”

“And you do?”

“I fake-dated her for a month, John. I picked up some things.” Sherlock sipped his tea again; John still hadn’t touched his. 

John said, “Do you think living with her is a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“She sold lies about you to the press, Sherlock,” John reminded him. 

“Oh, yes. Terrible lies about how I’m a fantastic shag. God help me, whatever will she do to me next? Say I’m wonderful to live with? An excellent cook?”

“All right,” said John. “I get the point.”

“Janine is fine. She isn’t going to sell me out. She isn’t Moriarty.”

“Well, I’m comforted by the news that Mycroft’s vetted her.”

“Yes,” said Sherlock, tone unreadable. “Because Mycroft’s vetting is so foolproof.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said John, defensive. 

“Nothing,” said Sherlock, and retreated to his tea again. 

“How are the crimes going?”

“The crimes?” Sherlock echoed. 

“Yes. Have you any time for consulting detective work in between videogame tournaments and pub crawls?”

Sherlock cocked his head at John, eyes narrowed, and John uncomfortably wondered how petty he was coming across. 

“Do you want to go out on a case?” Sherlock asked him. 

“Do you still have cases? I thought perhaps business had evaporated, since you haven’t rung me in ages and you replaced my blog with a dating service.”

“I haven’t replaced your blog with anything,” said Sherlock, sharply. “Your blog still exists. _You_ haven’t updated it.”

“I haven’t had anything to say, have I?” John retorted. 

“I didn’t know you wanted to go out on a case. You never gave me any indication you wished to.”

“All of a sudden I had to give you an ‘indication’ that I still wanted to be your best friend? I _told_ you that my marriage wasn’t going to change anything.”

“Business is steady,” said Sherlock, cordially. “You may have your pick of cases. You still have access to the e-mails. Choose one.”

John looked over at Sherlock, calm and cool and collected. He took a deep breath. He said, “I worry about you.”

Sherlock said, “I’m fine.” He paused. “How are _you_?”

“Also fine,” replied John. 

“Good,” said Sherlock, and sipped his tea again.


	3. Chapter 3

_February 28, 2015_

_This is what Shezza has to say about Bowser: “His motivations are illogical, which makes him the most dangerous sort of madman. This world of Mario is in grave danger.”_

_This is what Shezza has to say about Mario and Luigi: “It’s unlikely they are plumbers. Their conduct and appearance do not fit that of a plumber. It’s more likely they’re spies. Or contract assassins.”_

_This is what Shezza has to say about raccoon tails: “Do raccoons fly?”_

_This_

***

Sherlock walked into the sitting room and Janine looked up from the blog entry she was composing and tried to take stock of him. She wished she could deduce everything about him from one glance, the way he could have done with her. She couldn’t tell if he seemed tired or disturbed or depressed or unhappy or blank. He hung up his coat and then sat in his chair by the fireplace and pulled out his laptop, as if nothing whatsoever had happened. 

“Good talk?” Janine asked, finally. 

“Hmm?” said Sherlock, clattering away on his keyboard. 

“Good talk with John?”

“Of course.” Pause. “He wants to go out on a case. I thought I’d find him one.”

Janine looked at the back of Sherlock’s head. His tone was so frustratingly neutral about the whole thing. “Okay,” said Janine, eventually, and turned back to her blog entry. 

_This is what Shezza has to say about John Watson: Nothing._

Then she deleted the entire thing. 

***

_March 6, 2015_

_Day 42 of Operation Sexy Guitarist_

_I HAVE A DATE._

_I know, right?_

_AND I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF._

_Shezza’s been busy lately with a case (have I mentioned yet he’s a detective?), so I’ve been left to my own devices. Today, I was giving the newsagent his weekly bribe not to supply Shezza with cigarettes (I insisted he quit smoking, the bribe was Shezza’s idea) and I got to talking with this dead clever bloke who was buying a copy of_ Le Monde. Le Monde _, I tell you! Classy and everything, right? Turns out he’s a poet (I KNOW!) who makes his living writing fake profiles for Internet dating sites (did you know they did that? I didn’t!). Anyway, I know this makes him sound a bit crazy, but he was really sweet and we’ve got a date tomorrow night._

_I am waiting for Shezza to take credit for this because the only reason I was at the newsagent’s was because of him._

***

Sherlock said he had a decently interesting case and he would probably be busy for a while, which was fine by Janine, who liked having the flat all to herself sometimes. Sherlock was good company, but Janine valued alone-time. 

When she scored the date with Kevin, she texted Sherlock. She didn’t get a response, which wasn’t unusual, especially when he was working. In fact, she didn’t hear anything from Sherlock at all until he trailed into the flat the following day, about an hour before her date with Kevin. He looked uncharacteristically tired. In Janine’s experience, Sherlock came back from cases riding euphoric highs. At first, Janine had thought he _was_ high; she had since learned better. 

But he came in and blinked at her and deduced, “You’re going out. I’m afraid it’ll have to be solo. I must stay in and write up observations from this case.” He curled onto his chair with his laptop. 

“Did you solve it, then?” she asked. 

“Of course,” he said, offended, typing away the way he did when he didn’t want to talk to her. 

Janine was almost surprised, given his dull attitude. “Really?”

He sent her a brief scowl. “You needn’t sound surprised about that.”

“You’re just usually happier after you solve a case.”

“I’m happy,” said Sherlock, and gave her one of his ridiculous fake smiles, which he dropped immediately to go back to his laptop. 

“You’re usually downright giddy.”

“I am never giddy.”

Janine decided she didn’t want to stand there arguing with him about that. “Never mind. I am going out tonight, but I am not going solo.”

Sherlock huffed out an impatient sigh. “That thing you do where you think you charm me by ordering me around? Not going to work tonight.”

“I don’t do that,” Janine frowned. 

“Yes, you do. But only because I let you because normally it’s at least slightly more interesting than watching dust collect on the carpet.”

Janine narrowed her eyes at him. It wasn’t that Sherlock was ever really _nice_ , but it was true that he seemed more venomous than usual. “I have a date,” she announced, refusing to let him get to her. 

“However did you manage that?” asked Sherlock, without much interest. 

“By being pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself,” said Janine, and didn’t even get a snort of derision out of Sherlock. She hesitated, then continued, “I met him at the newsagent’s, bribing him about your cigarettes.”

“Mmm,” said Sherlock, clearly not paying attention. 

“So I thought you might want to take credit,” Janine prompted. 

“Mmm,” said Sherlock again. 

Janine put her hands on her hips. “You know, you could be a little bit more excited for me. Hey.” She stalked up to him and closed his laptop. 

He stared up at her belligerently. 

“I’m _talking_ to you.”

“I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m too busy to worry about the melodrama of your lack of love life,” sneered Sherlock. 

“Normally you’re only too eager to jump into that melodrama,” pointed out Janine. 

“Don’t mistake a desperate aversion to boredom for actual interest in the tedious monotony of your ‘Adventures of a Single Girl in London.’” 

Janine looked at him in bewilderment. “What the bloody hell happened on your case?”

“ _Nothing_ happened,” Sherlock snapped, and reclaimed his laptop. “Are you going away yet? On your pointless and inevitably disappointing ‘date’?”

“Yes,” Janine snapped back. “I am. Right now.” 

And even though she was very early, she stalked down to the pavement and waited there until it was time to leave, wishing that she smoked. 

***

_March 9, 2015_

_Day 45 of Operation What-the-Hell-Was-I-Thinking-a-Poet-Really?_

_The date was terrible._

***

Janine was halfway through an incredibly disappointing order of fish and chips and thinking that it suited the overall disappointment of the date. Then the text came in. She assumed it was Sherlock, texting to apologize. Not that he would ever text something as simple as _sorry_. But a text from him at all—even demanding that she stop at Bart’s to retrieve some tissue samples for him on her way in—would have qualified as an apology from him, she knew. 

But the text was not from Sherlock. 

_You’re needed at Baker Street immediately. –Mycroft Holmes_

Janine didn’t like being ordered about, but she did like having an excuse to cut the boring date short. So she told Kevin she had to go and went to Baker Street.

Sherlock was on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. 

“Is Mycroft here?” asked Janine. 

“Oh, God, no,” groaned Sherlock. “Don’t say his name, you’ll _summon_ him.”

Janine glanced back at the text in confusion and looked back at Sherlock. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Sherlock. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?” There was a pause, then Sherlock said, “You met your date at the newsagent's.”

“I told you that.”

“The newsagent wanted to know how your date went. I told him it went terribly.”

“First of all, the date hadn’t even happened yet.”

Sherlock looked at her. “Was it terrible?” he asked, knowingly. 

Janine said, “And what were you doing at the newsagent's?”

“Trying to get him to sell me cigarettes, but he refused because you _bribe_ him. Whose idea was that?”

Janine lifted her eyebrows at him and cleared her throat meaningfully. 

“Stupid idea,” Sherlock sulked on the sofa, turned his back on her, and then rolled off the sofa. “Never mind. I’m going out.”

Janine thought of Mycroft’s text and suddenly realized why she’d been called back to Baker Street to baby-sit Sherlock. “Out where?”

And then, abruptly, Mycroft swept in. With two men Janine had never seen before. Who immediately began going through everything in the flat. 

“Hey,” said Janine, affronted. 

Sherlock collapsed backward onto the sofa. “See? I told you not to say his name. As if today hasn’t been terrible enough.”

Janine looked at him in surprise. “You solved a case today.”

Sherlock stood, gathered his dressing gown around him imperiously, glared at Mycroft, and announced, “I am going to go drown myself.” And then disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door shut. 

Mycroft glanced at one of the men, saying, “Make sure the bathroom’s clean. Then you can let him stay in it.”

The man nodded and followed Sherlock into the bathroom, triggering an altercation of shouting that Mycroft ignored, walking over to sit in Sherlock’s chair as if he was ready for a tea party. Then the man left the bathroom and Sherlock slammed the door again and turned the lock on it as loudly as possible. 

Janine looked at Mycroft pointedly. 

“I pay you handsomely to make sure my brother doesn’t use again, and you leave him alone on the first danger night of your acquaintance,” remarked Mycroft, mildly. 

“I didn’t know it was a danger night,” Janine defended herself. “He’s just finished a case. He should have been in an excellent mood.”

Mycroft looked at her. “You knew he wasn’t. And you left him anyway.”

“He wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine,” said Janine, defensively, because Mycroft was right: She had known Sherlock was off, and she hadn’t stopped to consider that it might lead to a relapse, because she’d been annoyed that he hadn’t expressed enthusiasm for her. He was _Sherlock Holmes_ , and she had dismissed it as his usual being-a-prick-ness, but now she recognized the obvious mistake she had made: Sherlock was normally not deliberately mean without provocation from something else in his psyche. He had come home viciously unhappy over something and had taken it out on her. 

Janine, not for the first time, wished Sherlock would let her move the red armchair back downstairs so there would be somewhere to sit opposite his chair. But Sherlock got extremely, scathingly angry every time she suggested it, so she’d stopped suggesting it. Instead, she retrieved a chair from the kitchen and placed it opposite where Mycroft was sitting and said, “Okay. Since you clearly already know, tell me what happened with the case.”

“He solved it,” said Mycroft. 

“He told me that.”

“And then John Watson said, ‘Ta very much, it was fun,’ and went home to his wife.”

Janine closed her eyes briefly. “ _John_ went out on the case with him. He said he was finding John a case but then he didn’t mention him again, so I didn’t—”

“Does he frequently mention John?”

“He never mentions John. I think I lived here weeks before I ever heard him say John’s name.”

“Then why did you think he would tell you that he was going out on a case with John? He went out on a case, John went with him, they solved the case, and they parted ways.”

“And he came home in a terrible mood,” concluded Janine. 

“If it makes you feel better, I doubt Mary is having a pleasant evening at home, either.”

“You need to tell me what happened there, with the three of them. They were thick as thieves during all of the wedding planning. Everything Mary said to me was, ‘Sherlock prefers the lilac ones,’ ‘Sherlock approved the wording of the invitation,’ ‘Sherlock’s finished the seating chart,’ ‘Sherlock’s _designed the serviette sculptures_.’ And then something happened that stopped all of them speaking to each other, as far as I can tell. It wasn’t that he was fake-dating me, was it? I mean, it clearly didn’t bother _me_ , in the end, and Mary’s kind of stopped talking to me, too, so I don’t think she’s got any weird loyalty to me that she would be taking out on him. So what happened? What changed the balance that they’d managed to maintain? Because you can’t tell me Sherlock hasn’t been lovesick over John for years. This is not a new state of affairs. And yet it seems somehow worse.” 

Mycroft looked across at her for a second. “He ought to tell you,” he said, finally. 

“Yeah, well, he’s not, is he?” said Janine, hotly. She was tired of being in the dark, and especially tired of the fact that it meant she really didn’t know what to do to make things better. She was very fond of Sherlock. In fact, at this point, given that she and Mary had drifted apart without Janine noticing, Sherlock was basically her best friend. If she’d come home to him high because she’d been out on a date and angry with him for what were clearly warning-sign cries for help, she would never have forgiven herself. But it was unfair to force her into a position where she felt like she was flailing around with him. 

Mycroft said, after a moment, “There was a time when I thought John Watson was very good for my brother. And then Sherlock went and got himself _involved_. And then there was the inevitable outcome that occurs when you get yourself _involved_.”

“What outcome?” asked Janine. 

“You get your heart broken,” said Mycroft, and stood. “By the way, are you planning on seeing Kevin again?”

Janine wasn’t even alarmed that Mycroft knew her date’s name. She shrugged. “It was a bit dull, to be honest.”

“Good. Because he’s a spy. Highly rated assassin.”

Janine blinked up at him. “ _What_?”

“Common problem with people who live in this flat: they end up dating assassins,” said Mycroft, dryly. 

Janine tried to think of who else Sherlock had dated, aside from her and John Watson, and came up blank. Had John been an assassin? Janine said, “Do you think you could have warned me of that?”

“I’m warning you now, aren’t I?” said Mycroft, mildly, and left.

***

_March 10, 2015_

_Shezza has an older brother, who I will call Mike, because his real name is too ridiculous to be used. Mike thinks he has an extremely important job and he is always telling us all about it. As far as I can tell, his job is something like being a zookeeper: He has to make sure all of the animals stay in their own habitats and don’t get together and kill each other._

_Mike stops by every once in a while and frowns at Shezza and me. Shezza frowns back. I try to get Mike to have a glass of wine and unwind. My goal is to get Mike to play Wii with us._

_Anyway, Mike had an opinion on my terrible date, and the opinion was this: My date was basically a tiger who’d got out of its habitat and into mine. And I’m something like a wildebeest or whatever tigers eat._

_So I guess I should let Shezza vet all my dates for me to make sure I don’t end up being killed anytime soon._

***

Janine let the aftereffect from the case with John run its course on Sherlock’s psyche. When Sherlock got out of the shower—right after Mycroft and his operatives had left, conveniently enough—he retreated to his bedroom and played the violin for several hours in a row. Janine sprawled on the sofa and kept refreshing John’s blog to see if he would update it with the case. 

He never did. 

The following day, Janine went out and brought them back coffee and biscuits. Sherlock loved biscuits for breakfast. And he hadn’t locked his bedroom door, so she took that as an invitation. She sat on his bed with him and made a big fuss over how delicious the biscuits were until he ate one to shut her up, and then she said, “Let’s do an experiment involving wine.”

“What sort of experiment?” asked Sherlock, sulkily, nibbling half-heartedly at his biscuit. 

“We’ll test our ability to play Wii and how it correlates to the level of alcohol in our blood.”

Sherlock heaved an enormous sigh and said, “Fine,” as if she had just asked him to clean the kitchen. 

But the ploy worked, and by early evening Sherlock was drunk enough that he was sprawled on the sofa enumerating what you could tell about a person from the type of toothpaste they used. Janine topped him off, felt like a terrible, manipulative human being, reminded herself that Sherlock would have had no qualms about manipulating her, pretended to be drunker than she was, and said, “Tell me about John Watson,” interrupting Sherlock’s monologue. 

“Hmm?” Sherlock looked up at the ceiling and said, so casually, so simply, as if there could be no other reply, “What about him? That he’s perfect?”

And Janine’s heart felt as if it plummeted through her body and cracked. From where she was seated on the floor, she leaned up against the leg of the desk and looked at Sherlock on the sofa and wondered how she could possibly have thought that she could ever fix _that_. That reply summed up everything hopeless about getting Sherlock over John. 

Janine pretended to sip her wine so that Sherlock wouldn’t realize how much she’d managed to get him to outdrink her. Although Sherlock had been off all day to begin with and was very drunk now and she thought she’d got away with it. “What happened between you?”

“Nothing,” said Sherlock, slowly. “Absolutely nothing.” He sipped his wine. 

“Right, but I mean, you must have had some sort of…” Janine didn’t want to say “falling-out.” She didn’t know what she wanted to say. So she changed tactics. “You don’t talk much anymore.”

“He married someone else,” said Sherlock, matter-of-factly. “He can’t spend every single moment with me. And, anyway, it’s unnecessary. We don’t need to spend every single moment together. It’s quite nice to just share in the cases the way we always have and have separate lives otherwise. It’s really _working_ , don’t you think?”

There was something about the way Sherlock was speaking, his voice dripping with sarcasm, like he was parroting words back to her. “Is that what he said to you?” Janine asked, and thought it was no wonder Sherlock had come home depressed. It didn’t matter that Janine was sure John had meant the entire speech to be kind, to be an olive branch of reconciliation, an effort to find a workable way to share his life with two people. Janine saw Sherlock Holmes saying that John Watson was _perfect_ , and then also being told that it was “working” for them to have separate lives. 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Sherlock waved his hand around. “He meant well. It’s what I wanted, anyway.” Sherlock gulped at his wine and then held the glass out. He’d only finished half of it. 

Janine thought it was possible Sherlock didn’t need more wine at the moment. She decided this had been a stupid idea, getting Sherlock drunk enough to talk to her about this. He was going to hate her in the morning. And, anyway, how was she supposed to protect him from substance abuse by giving him alcohol instead? She was a stupid idiot who had let her own curiosity get the better of her. She didn’t fill his glass. But she did say, “What’s what you wanted?” because she didn’t know what Sherlock was talking about. 

“He wanted Mary. So I gave him Mary. Tied her all up in a bloody fucking bow,” said Sherlock, and Janine blinked and wondered if he was very drunk or just very angry and finally letting himself feel it. “Practically, anyway. Not really. I didn’t tie her up in a bow _really_.” Sherlock took back his wineglass and took another sip without seeming to notice that Janine hadn’t filled it. 

“That’s—” Janine began, trying to think of what to say. 

Sherlock rolled abruptly to his side and pinned her with his eyes. Those stupid eyes, Janine thought. No wonder criminals so frequently crumpled in front of him. “What was I supposed to do, though?” he demanded, furiously. “I left him and then I came back and he didn’t want me, he wanted a future _with her_ , he told me he did. So of course I let him have it. She made him happy. When I wasn’t there to. She _makes_ him happy. He thinks he wants that, the little house in the suburbs with the perfect wife and the baby. Any minute now he’ll be getting himself a fucking _dog_ , and he’ll be showing up here thinking there’s no problem bringing a dog to crime scenes, too, it’ll all work, isn’t it all bloody _lovely_ , all of it? John Watson dying in suburbia because I gave it to him. I literally _died_ to give it to him, three times over, and now he thinks that he can just flit in and out as if—” Sherlock cut himself off and closed his eyes and sighed. “Never mind,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”

Janine watched him for a second, half-wondering if he was about to fall asleep. Then, because the point of this whole thing was to try to _fix it_ for him, she ventured, carefully, “But you like Mary, don’t you? I mean, the two of you seemed very close while you were planning the wedding. I know it must be difficult for you, but you handled it well then, and maybe you could find a way to—” Janine knew it sounded stupid even as she was saying it: How could you be as in love with a person as Sherlock was and be friends with that person’s _wife_? But he _had_ managed it, for a little while, and while he had seemed a bit melancholy at the wedding, he had seemed better than he was now. Janine thought that _John_ was the addiction that she really needed to worry about where Sherlock was concerned. 

Then Sherlock cut her off by saying, “Oh, yes, I bloody loved Mary, until she _shot me_.”

Janine stared at him. For a moment there was silence in the flat. Sherlock finished his wine and held the empty glass out to Janine. When she didn’t move to fill it, he opened his eyes and looked at her. 

“What?” he asked. 

Janine thought of Sherlock in a hospital bed, pale and small somehow, and she had been furious with him and also terrified for him, for how close a call it had been. She thought of John, who had let her in to see Sherlock, standing guard over his visitors. _I’ll not let you in if you’re going to shout at him and upset him_ , John had said, and his face had been drawn, his eyes still shadowed by sleeplessness, as if he’d aged a decade overnight in the course of sitting by Sherlock’s bedside, and Janine said, unable to get her voice louder than a whisper, “Mary shot you?”

“Mmm,” said Sherlock, and waved his wineglass about. “ _Wine_ ,” he said. 

Janine poured it automatically, as if in a dream. She said, “When you were in hospital, _that_ shooting, that was Mary?”

“That was Mary,” said Sherlock, sounding quizzical that she was so confused. And then, “Oh, you didn’t know that. Oops. That was a secret. A major secret. Don’t put this in your blog, but: Mary’s an assassin.”

Janine blinked. “ _What_?”

“Mary’s an assassin. A very, very good one.” Sherlock closed his eyes again. “John only picks the best, you know. Only the very best sociopaths for John Watson.” Sherlock sipped his wine. “And then I killed Magnusson, and then Mycroft orchestrated it so there would be no repercussions for it with that fake Moriarty trick he pulled. All connected, you know, all of it.”

Janine didn’t care about Magnusson or fake Moriarty. She was focused on the other revelation. “But why did Mary shoot you?”

“Because she’s an idiot who didn’t trust me. I’m not used to that from Watsons. If it had been John…John would have…even with no reason to ever do it ever again, John always trusts me. Always. I thought Mary would… I thought he would have… It didn’t matter that she had taken him from me, I was so _fair_ about it, I was so _reasonable_ , I would never have… Then she shot me.” Sherlock shrugged. 

Janine thought again of John, of the tired jubilation in his eyes when he’d said, _He’ll be fine, he’ll pull through. It was touch and go but he’s a stubborn prat when all is said and done, thank God_. “Does John know?” Janine asked, thinking how this would change _everything_ , how John Watson should be told, immediately, that his wife had shot his best friend, had almost killed him. 

“Yes,” said Sherlock, casually, shocking her. 

“ _Yes_?” Janine echoed, disbelievingly. “He _knows_?”

“Of course he knows. Did you think I’d keep it from him? He has to know so that he’ll understand it if she kills someone again. They’re going to have a child; it’s safest for John to know everything he can.”

“And what did John say?” Janine couldn’t wrap her mind around any of this. 

“John forgave her. Eventually. I told him to.”

Janine blinked at him. “You _told_ him to?”

“I told him that she didn’t mean to kill me. Not really. I excused him from having to be angry at her for that.”

“Did she mean to kill you?” 

Sherlock opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “Do you know something?” he said, finally, slowly. “I don’t actually know. I think…I think she didn’t overly care one way or the other. I think she gave me a fighting chance—she didn’t go for the kill shot, she _did_ give me a chance—but I think she would not have shed a tear if I’d died. I think she would only have shed a tear if I’d died and she didn’t get away with it. But she wouldn’t have cared all that much, because her future with John would have been assured, and that was of paramount importance to her.” Sherlock sipped his wine. “And I understand that. Once you have John Watson, how could you not do everything in your power to keep him?”

Janine pointed out the obvious. “You didn’t.”

Sherlock looked at Janine, and his eyes were very sad, and Janine felt like crying into her wine and wondered if she was drunker than she’d thought. “I’m a coward and an idiot, and Mary is neither. Mary saw what she wanted and went for it, and I never did. John gave me so many opportunities, so many openings, and I… Mary grabbed every single one of them. Mary won. And then she played me like a violin, so much so that by the time I realized she was a danger to me I was already unconscious and bleeding to death from the fatal wound.”

Janine stared at him. She said, “But Mary likes you.” She thought that was true. She remembered Mary asking her to be in the wedding, explaining who she would be partnered with. _John’s going to ask Sherlock Holmes to be his best man. You know, the one that’s been in the papers. He can be abrupt, but he’s really quite sweet. Rude, but not malicious, and he means well most of the time._ It was not a bad assessment of Sherlock Holmes, Janine had found, and really a very kind one. 

“Did she?” Sherlock asked, and rolled back onto his back to look up at the ceiling again. “I thought she did. But that seems unlikely—people usually don’t like me—and really it was her only play, wasn’t it? If she disliked me and made me dislike her, then I would have been ruthless in trying to get her away from John, probably. And she had a lot for me to use to accomplish that task. So I don’t know. I’ve never made a decision on that point, either.” Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed heavily. 

Janine sat, frozen, and tried to process everything. 

“I was engaged once,” Janine heard herself say, and Sherlock opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her. He didn’t look surprised, and she wondered if he had deduced that and had just never said anything. 

But no. He said, “What happened?” and she thought he was too drunk at the moment to pretend not to know something that he knew. 

“On the day of the wedding, he was late. So was my best friend. Because they were shagging.” Janine gestured with her wineglass. “Hence why I was in the market for a new best friend when I met Mary.”

Sherlock considered. Then he shook his head and looked back at the ceiling, as if words failed him. 

“So anyway,” said Janine, and moved over to sit next to the sofa, resting her head a bit closer to Sherlock’s than she would have dared had they both been sober. “This is what I have to say about men.” She tipped her glass against Sherlock’s in a mock toast. “They can fuck off.”

Sherlock said, “I miss him every single _second_.”

“You’re not getting the point of that toast,” said Janine. 

“No,” said Sherlock, and sighed and closed his eyes again.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

_March 11, 2015_

_Operation MEN on Permanent Hiatus_

_You know what it is about love? It just sets you up to get hurt. You can love and love and love and give and give and give, and in the end you don’t get a happily ever after, you just get a broken heart and a couple of empty bottles of wine and a head that aches so much you can’t stand it. And all for the horrific sin of deciding to love someone else more than yourself. Why is that fair? It isn’t._

***

Janine delayed leaving Sherlock’s bedroom in the morning. She wasn’t sure what he was going to say to her, and she was dreading it. It would be well within his rights to be furious with her for what she’d done, but at the same time she honestly thought that clearing the air had been the right thing to do. It had certainly got her thinking a lot more clearly about the mess Sherlock had got himself into where John was concerned. 

Sherlock was in the kitchen when she got up enough courage to walk out there. He had a smoking test tube in one hand and was taking notes with the other, and he didn’t look up at her. 

She hesitated, then ventured, “Good morning?” She hated that she made it sound like a question. 

Sherlock still didn’t look up. “My head is killing me,” he said. “If you were going to get me drunk, you could at least have used better wine than that.”

Janine sat opposite him at the kitchen table and looked at him across the forest of science equipment. She didn’t even know what to _call_ most of it. She said, “Are you angry?”

After a moment, Sherlock sighed and put his pen down. He kept the smoking test tube in his hand and looked up at Janine. “No. You were due a bit of subterfuge, I think.” He hesitated. “I can’t really criticize people for using manipulation against me.” He said it in a bit of a rush, as if it was a new discovery he’d made. 

“I just wanted to know,” Janine said, “because I thought it would help me help.”

“Foolish of you. Now I’ve just made everything more dangerous for you because you know something you’re not supposed to know, and I don’t quite trust Mary.”

“You think Mary would shoot me, too? For what purpose?”

“It should be fairly obvious to you now that I can’t predict Mary,” said Sherlock. 

“And yet you told John he could trust her,” Janine pointed out. 

“Well,” said Sherlock, after a moment, “I don’t like to think that John could fall in love with someone who was irredeemable. But _I’m_ not in love with her, and so I don’t trust her, and so I’m sorry I put you in jeopardy that way.”

“Mary shot you in Magnusson’s office,” Janine said, because she’d made the connection while lying awake in bed the night before. “That meant she was in Magnusson’s office that night, too. Why?”

“He was blackmailing her, of course.”

“Is that why she was friends with me? Just because I worked for Magnusson?”

Sherlock picked up his pen again and resumed writing. “I don’t know. But it’s why I was fake-dating you, and that didn’t seem to bother you.”

Janine considered that. Because that _was_ true. “Hang on, is she the one that hit me over the head?”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” said Sherlock. 

Janine frowned, processing. 

“Moving on.” Sherlock put his pen back down, as well as the test tube, and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms, as if that was the conclusion of that conversational topic forever. “Your date with Kevin was less than satisfactory. I would have predicted that. Your red flag was his profession.”

“Poet?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Poet. Please. He was no more a poet than I am. Writing fake profiles for online dating sites. He knew exactly how to lure you in. Oldest trick in the book.”

“Writing fake profiles for online dating sites is the oldest trick in the book?” said Janine. 

“It’s a figure of speech,” grumbled Sherlock. 

"Mycroft said he was an assassin.”

“Oh, and now Mycroft’s brilliant at spotting assassins in our midst.”

“Can I say something about John Watson?” asked Janine, tentatively. 

“No,” said Sherlock, sharply. “You can’t. I’m going to forgive you for getting me drunk and manipulating me in exchange for you never mentioning any of that ever again.”

“Do you think it’s a secret, Sherlock? That you’re in love with him? Ninety percent of the people at that wedding knew you were in love with him by the time you finished your best man speech. You don’t see the way you look at him. You give it away.”

Sherlock frowned. “Well, you never found it necessary to discuss it before last night, so—”

“I’m not sure he’s good for you,” Janine blurted out. “I mean, things were going well. Don’t you think things were going well? And then he walked back into your life and you’re sad now and—”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock retorted. “I’m certainly not _sad_.”

“Fine,” said Janine, after a second. “But maybe just…leave him off the next few cases.” Janine wanted to say, _I don’t think it’s doing you any good to remind yourself what you lost, to take him with you and pine over the fact that he goes home to someone else_. She didn’t. 

Sherlock said, “I didn’t know about your fiancé. I knew you’d been hurt, but I didn’t bother to get into the details. I didn’t know it was so…I mean, you’re still so hopeful about finding love. You’re very…forgiving. And optimistic.”

Sherlock spoke cautiously, as if such traits were so foreign to him that he wasn’t sure he was naming them properly. But Janine thought things she didn’t say: that she had loved her fiancé but she had determined, after he had turned out to be a lying cheat, that he hadn’t been The One for her; that The One was still out there; that Sherlock had already determined that John was his One and didn’t seem likely to be dissuaded by anything if he hadn’t been dissuaded by John choosing a woman who had shot him. She wanted to tell Sherlock he had to move on, the way John had when Sherlock had been dead, but she didn’t think Sherlock would even understand the concept. For Sherlock, the conversation began and ended with John Watson: He was perfect. 

Janine said, “Would you have done it differently? If you’d known?”

Sherlock thought about that for a moment. “I’d like to say yes,” he decided, finally. 

Janine grinned at him. “But you wouldn’t have.”

“No,” Sherlock admitted. “Probably not.”

Janine stood, intending to go take a shower, and said, lightly, “You _are_ a heartless sociopath. How did I end up with you for a best friend?”

She’d meant it as a joke, but Sherlock blinked up at her in astonishment. “Am I your best friend?”

“Of course you are,” Janine said, quizzically. “I haven’t got any others, do I? One shagged my fiancé and the other one’s an assassin. In comparison, you look like Mother Teresa.”

Sherlock was so solemn looking up at her that for a moment she couldn’t move. She waited for what he was going to say next. 

What he said was, “I read your blog entry. Some people do get the happily-ever-after. I’m going to find it for you.”

Janine smiled at him. “See, that’s what makes you a good best friend.”

“But if you tell anyone about the rest of the things I said last night—you know, _all_ of it—I will not be pleased,” said Sherlock, sternly. “It was meant to be a secret, and it’s got to stay a secret. It’s the only way to keep everyone safe.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone. But even if I _did_ betray your trust, I know your secret.” She waggled her finger at him. 

Sherlock regarded the finger with dubious distaste. “What’s that?”

“You would never shoot me,” said Janine, and kissed his cheek. 

***

_March 12, 2015_

_Shezza, of all people, says I shouldn’t give up on Operation MEN. I told him I need a break, though. Maybe I just need a little girl-time instead._

_Comments_

_You were unclear with your preference. If you wanted girls, you should have told me earlier. –Shezza_

_Not like that. But thanks for your concern. –J_

***

Janine was weirdly nervous, considering that all she was doing was meeting a woman for lunch whose wedding she had been in. But, when she stopped to think about it, she and Mary had not spoken since the night Janine had been hit over the head. Presumably by Mary herself. And now, knowing everything she knew about Mary, Janine thought she was justified in being nervous. 

But Mary came in and gave her a hug, just like normal. She was hugely pregnant, and Janine tried to do the maths in her head. How much longer until there was a baby? Would John call Sherlock? Would that throw Sherlock off the rails again? 

Mary sat and said, “So, you didn’t tell me about you and Sherlock.” She looked at her archly, lifting an eyebrow, as if Janine had been under some kind of obligation to tell Mary about that. 

And suddenly the whole thing rubbed Janine the wrong way. “You didn’t tell me that you’re an assassin who only befriended me to get to Magnusson,” she retorted, and then bit her tongue. Oh, bugger. Sherlock was going to kill her when he found out she’d let Mary know she knew. Well, not literally kill her. Janine would leave the killing to Mary. 

The expression on Mary’s face froze in shock, and then, after a moment, turned cold. “Is that what he told you?”

“I believe him,” Janine said, because she didn’t feel like listening to the lie Mary would attempt to tell, and because she _did_ believe Sherlock. The entire story was too outrageous for him to make up. 

“He did the same thing, you know: got close to you to get to Magnusson.” Mary sipped some of her water. 

“I know,” Janine said, evenly. “You’re both jerks.”

“So is that why you called me for lunch? So you could cry about something I was in the past, before I ever knew you?” Mary looked bored. 

“No,” said Janine. “Honestly, I didn’t intend to say anything about it at all. In fact, I promised Sherlock I wouldn’t. So I’m going to get an earful about that. But no, really I wanted to talk to you about something entirely different.”

“Okay,” said Mary, cautiously, plainly trying to sort out what it could be. 

Janine swallowed and looked at Mary and said, “I want you to keep John away from Sherlock.”

Mary blinked. “What?”

“I know it’s not really any of my business, but, well, the truth is Sherlock kind of is my business now.”

Mary lifted her eyebrows. “And you’re jealous of John?”

“No,” Janine said, truthfully, because she wasn’t. 

“Getting between the two of them is not the way to win Sherlock over.”

_I don’t want to win Sherlock over_ , thought Janine. _I just want to stop watching him die day-by-day in front of me_. Janine said, “I’m not the one who got between the two of them.”

“Oh,” said Mary, defensively. “I suppose you think that was me. I have been nothing but entirely supportive of their friendship. I let John run around on cases and I never say a word. I _tell_ him to go get cases.”

“I know,” said Janine. “And I’m asking if you could give it a break. For me.”

Mary narrowed her eyes, looking at her in apparent astonishment. “Do you really fancy Sherlock? After everything he did?”

Janine didn’t. But Janine thought it was better to protect Sherlock. Better to say that than _No, but Sherlock is so in love with your husband that you’re crushing him, whether you intend to or not_. Janine thought Mary must know the way Sherlock felt, or at least suspect, but Janine was determined not to increase Sherlock’s vulnerability with Mary by saying it out loud. It was bad enough that Sherlock had to live every day with his belief that Mary had beaten him. 

So Janine said, “You of all people shouldn’t knock forgiveness.” When Mary looked appropriately contrite, she said, “Look. We used to be friends, right? I miss being friends. So I’m asking you, friend to friend, if you could give me a little room to work with Sherlock here, some non-John space in his head.”

Mary gave her a brilliant smile and said, “Oh, Janine, of course, absolutely.”

Afterwards, Janine reflected that she was getting much better at being a sociopath. 

***

John said, “I thought I might text Sherlock,” and Mary said, “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

They were cuddled together, watching the telly, and it was the telly that John blinked at in surprise, because he thought it would have been too dramatic to jostle Mary just so he could face her. “Yeah,” he said, and hated that he said it a bit belligerently. “And so do you, usually,” he couldn’t resist pointing out. 

“Mmm,” Mary said, mildly. “It’s just that, I don’t know, maybe we all just need a bit more…space?”

John stared at the television in silence, turning this over in his head. “Is this about Janine’s ridiculous blog?”

“Her what?”

“Her blog.”

Mary jostled herself so she could look at John, but John kept looking at the television. “Janine’s _blog_?”

“She has a blog, you know,” said John. “I showed it to you.”

“Have you been reading it?”

He read it religiously. It was ridiculous. “No,” he said, but he knew Mary would know he was lying, because Mary always knew when he was lying. He didn’t have the same trait. He had rather the opposite trait. He had the trait of Never Knowing What Was Bloody Going On Until People Saw Fit To Finally Tell Him. 

“You’re not jealous of her blog, are you?” said Mary. “I told you to start up your blog again. I thought you would feel better.” 

“I don’t want this—” He gestured around the room vaguely. “—to be part of _that_.” He gestured over his shoulder, by which he meant to indicate the entire world outside. 

“I know. And it’s a sweet impulse. But you like writing, and you should do more of it.” Mary rested her head on his shoulder, snuggled hard. 

He didn’t actually like writing. He thought it was easy to make the mistake of thinking so. He’d made the mistake himself. But he’d opened up his blog to write a thousand times and he had never made it past the blank screen. He didn’t like writing; he liked writing about _Sherlock_. 

And a part of him really hated himself, because he had Mary, and the baby coming, and maybe things had been a bit of a slog between them but Mary had turned out to still be Mary, the woman he had fallen in love with and married. There were lots of days when he could imagine that the entire assassin episode had been some sort of fevered hallucination. Most of the time, he thought that he and Mary were going to work out, he really did. 

But it didn’t matter. Even on the good days, on the very best days with Mary, he missed Sherlock. When Sherlock had been dead, that had been true as well, but John could dismiss that as grief, as a relationship that had ended in the middle of the story, the lack of resolution haunting him forever. But now he didn’t have that excuse anymore. He could resolve the relationship; he _had_ resolved the relationship. He had tried, very hard, to make the two separate lives work, and it had worked, almost, for a while, before everything that had happened. And that was what happened: Life changed, it moved on, you drifted apart from some people and closer to others. It just _happened_. 

But John missed Sherlock with a sharp and unrelenting ache. John missed Sherlock even when he was _with_ Sherlock. Because nothing was ever going to be the same again, and the regret over that was a sour throb in his veins. He should have been a content man, anticipating the birth of his first child, a brand new adventure, and instead he was bored and sad and oddly _lonely_ , even though he was almost never alone. 

The person that he wanted was Sherlock. And sometimes that worried him. Because when he was with Sherlock, he didn’t seem to miss Mary that way. When he was with Sherlock, even now, the way they were, there was no room for anyone else but the two of them. He could tell that even Sherlock thought that; it wasn’t like Sherlock had asked his new best friend Janine to tag along with them ever. 

And John worried about that. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t it be Mary who he missed at all times? How had he managed to confuse that so much? How had he managed to make this incredible mess of his life?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - Mary and baby die off-screen in this chapter, so...yeah.

Chapter Five

_March 22, 2015_

_Day 58 of Operation Oh-Wait-No-Something-MUCH-More-Important-Happened_

_So Shezza said we had to get back on the horse. Actually, Shezza didn’t say anything about horses, before he leaves a comment to that effect._

_But we decided to give pubs another try. After our long gap, we thought we’d ease ourselves into it. And, actually, we had a live one. I mean, a really terrific bloke. He was dashing and funny. A dentist, which Shezza said was just the right sort of dull career for me. I was really enjoying my time with him._

_And then Shezza went flying out the door of the pub, causing all sorts of commotion, and what was I supposed to do, just *let* him? I mean, clearly something was going on, right?_

_I was right. What was going on was that, while I was busy chatting up the terrific dentist, Shezza had deduced that one of the patrons of the pub had just kidnapped a little girl. So what did we do last night? Yeah, we just saved a little girl's life, no big deal._

_If you’re the dentist I was talking to, though, I’d love it if you could leave me a comment._

***

The dentist, thought Sherlock, might be a good fit. He was a bit bland, but Janine wasn’t John: she wasn’t necessarily looking for excitement. Janine wanted to find a good, solid bloke to settle down with, someone who was funny and kind and wouldn’t shag her best friend (and since he was apparently her best friend, Sherlock thought that the odds of him finding Janine someone who would want to shag _him_ instead were fairly slim). Janine had high standards of attractiveness—Sherlock suspected she was pretty herself, although his concept of beauty was frequently artificial and so he was never quite sure of it—and that was often their biggest hurdle in the dating game they were playing. Sherlock had found a single person attractive in his entire life: John Watson. So judging the attractiveness of men was not his strong suit and was where he tended to go wrong. But he had apparently done well with the dentist, because Janine was twirling her hair and smiling too much, which she did when she was sexually interested in someone, so that was good, because Sherlock thought that the dentist was a good fit in all other respects. 

Janine, for once, seemed to have things well in hand, so Sherlock relaxed a little bit and looked around the pub. He was bored, now that he’d finished deducing for Janine, and he wondered how much longer he was expected to stay before he could call the evening a success and leave. Although Baker Street sounded dull. He wondered if Lestrade had a case; his inbox hadn’t greatly interested him. 

The mobile in his pocket buzzed, and Sherlock glanced at Janine, who had leaned even closer to the dentist. Clearly going well and not stealth-texting him. 

Sherlock pulled his mobile out, hoping it was Lestrade, dreading it was Mycroft. 

It was John: _Thinking of you. At a bit of a loose end tonight. Anything on?_

Sherlock’s first instinct was to text back immediately: _I am dreadfully bored. Let’s entertain each other. Meet me at NSY and we’ll irritate Lestrade until we get something to do._ Sherlock stood with his fingers hovering over his mobile screen and wanted that evening so badly he could _taste_ it. He remembered standing in a bathroom with cocaine in his pocket and having the same feeling, nearly trembling with the fine anticipation of it. 

Janine laughed, over by the bar, and Sherlock heard it and looked up at her. Janine had asked him to gain a bit of distance from John, and Sherlock had been offended, but maybe, Sherlock reluctantly agreed, thinking of the spectre of cocaine in his pocket, Janine was right. Highs inevitably wore off and then you were left in disgusting houses full of filth and vermin, on mattresses that weren’t your own. Or just Baker Street, without John Watson. 

And it would inevitably end that way. John was at a loose end for a night, so John had texted him. John hadn’t texted him to say, _I miss you with every thought in my head. I can’t stand to be away from you, can you please manufacture some way for us to see each other?_ John had said, _You are temporarily less boring than the other things I could be doing._ Sherlock recognized the irony of being subjected to that in a relationship. It almost made him believe in God, the cleverness of that punishment being wrought on him. 

Sherlock closed his eyes and let the temptation of John scatter away from him, lost the thrill thrumming through his blood, took deep breaths to slow his heart rate. Not worth it, he thought. 

He put the mobile back in his pocket, John’s text unanswered, and looked around the pub with new eyes. Something to do, he thought. He desperately needed something to do. 

For a moment, he thought he was imagining everything when he caught sight of the furtive-looking man who had just come into the pub. Sherlock watched him order a pint, exchange pleasantries with a few of the other people in the pub. A regular, in for his daily pint. But surely this was an out-of-the-ordinary day. He ordered a different type of beer—the bartender, confused, correct him—and counted out the wrong amount of change. He spoke with forced joviality to the people around him, but his mind was clearly on other things. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Sherlock frowned. Why didn’t anybody else _see_ these things? 

Sherlock rose from his table and wandered over to the bar. The man had a single long blonde curl clinging to his coat. A woman, Sherlock thought. Had he just met a woman? Come from an assignation? Was that the reason for his nervousness? Had he just shagged someone’s wife?

Sherlock cast his eyes over the people the man had spoken to, dismissed that possibility. 

“Are you going to order something?” the bartender asked him. 

“Stop bothering me,” Sherlock told him, and glanced back at the man in question. He hadn’t noticed Sherlock. He was lost in his own little world. He kept smiling and then looking abruptly guilty about it. And he had his hand in his pocket. What was his hand in his pocket for? 

Sherlock walked over to him, assumed his best attitude of casualness. “Hate to bother you,” he said, “but can you break a twenty?” Sherlock held a twenty pound note up. 

“No,” the man said, shortly, and glared at him. 

“Look, I don’t even need exact change. I’ll give you this twenty if you’ll just give me a couple of pounds. I’m in a bind and really need some change.”

It was a flimsy story, but Sherlock had learned there was no need to construct better ones when you were offering people money. The man sighed, but he pulled his hand out of his pocket, along with his wallet, and Sherlock got to see what he’d been fingering, because he almost pulled that out as well: a pink ribbon. 

Sherlock’s eyes zeroed in on the long blonde curl on the man’s coat. Not a woman, thought Sherlock. A little girl who still wore hair ribbons. 

“Sorry,” said the man. “No change.” He glared at Sherlock again as he replaced the wallet. 

“Worth a shot,” said Sherlock, with a little smile, then walked back to his table. Janine was still at the bar, still chatting up her dentist. Sherlock glanced at her, then considered. Kidnapping? Could it be a kidnapping? Was he just feeling bored and restless and seeing things where there was nothing at all?

And then the man confirmed that there was definitely something to be worrying about, because the man kept looking over at him, as if worried. Sherlock took his mobile out of his pocket and dialed Lestrade, keeping an eye on the man surreptitiously as he did so. 

“Lestrade.”

“Hello,” Sherlock said, with a broad smile, as if he was absolutely caught up in the most distracting conversation ever. “I think I might be in a pub with someone interesting.”

“What?” said Lestrade, blankly, and Sherlock watched the man, after casting another glance to ascertain he was absorbed in his mobile conversation, dart out of the pub. 

“Got to go,” said Sherlock, and threw his phone back in his pocket and stood up so hastily that he knocked his chair over, which didn’t matter, because he had to exit the pub as quickly as possible to keep the man in sight. He pushed his way through people who all seemed to be in his way at once and finally got to the street and looked up and down it. 

“Sherlock,” said Janine. “What—”

“Oh,” said Sherlock, “you should have stayed with the boring dentist.” And then he spotted the man, still moving furtively, which made him more obvious. He glanced over his shoulder and Sherlock turned and cupped Janine’s face and kissed her. Well. Barely pressed his closed lips up against hers, but from the distance the kidnapper was at, it should have been convincing. 

Sherlock counted to three, then straightened away from Janine and looked back. Predictably, the kidnapper was walking a bit more leisurely now, confident that Sherlock wasn’t following him anymore. Idiot, thought Sherlock. 

“What the hell was that?” asked Janine, sounding shocked. 

“Come with me,” Sherlock said, taking Janine’s hand and pulling her with him. “And smile at me like I’m extremely charming and you’re very in love with me.”

“Why?” asked Janine, but she nevertheless obeyed him, batting her eyelashes at him. 

“Because we’re catching ourselves a kidnapper,” said Sherlock, glancing in front of them to make sure they were still following. 

“We’re what?” said Janine, although her facial expression didn’t change. 

She was good at this, thought Sherlock, and then wondered why he was surprised. 

They followed the man for several blocks. Janine talked non-stop nonsense so it would look like they were engaged in a conversation. 

“You could be a little more convincing on your end,” she said, eventually. 

“I look exactly like a boyfriend: bored and thinking of football results in my head,” replied Sherlock, watching the man slip through a doorway into a rundown old terraced house that had clearly been subdivided into flats. 

Sherlock dropped Janine’s hand and picked up his pace into a jog, looking over the building as he approached it. 

“This is the place,” Sherlock said to Janine, and took a step back as he phoned Lestrade. “Would he hold her in a front-facing flat, though? There could be a back entrance. I’ll have to slip around—Lestrade. I’ve apprehended you a kidnapper. Janine is going to give you the address.” Sherlock stuck his mobile out and Janine took it by instinct. “Tell Lestrade where we are and stay here.”

Sherlock left her there and slipped around the back of the terrace. Yes, back entrance, opening out onto an alley, and two figures came out of it: the man Sherlock had seen and a child, bundled up in generic gray clothing, hoodie up over what Sherlock was convinced were blonde curls. The child was stumbling, but not really resisting. Drugged, Sherlock thought. And there was nothing for it. The man was going to know he was being followed immediately. The alleyway offered no cover, and there was little reason why a man of Sherlock’s silhouette would be there. Sherlock did not often wish that he hadn’t worn his coat, but he wished it at that moment, and then he thought, _Oh, sod it_ , and took off running as quickly as he could. 

The man, hearing his footsteps, hesitated to look behind him, a fatal mistake that allowed Sherlock to gain a very valuable fraction on him. Then he started running, but he was dragging the little girl behind him (hoodie fell off, yes, long blonde curls) and then Sherlock tackled him, trying to avoid taking the little girl down with them. The man, luckily, let go of the little girl immediately, and then lashed out with a knife. Sherlock should have expected him to be armed but hadn’t quite. The knife went through his coat and into his forearm, and Sherlock was honestly more annoyed at the destruction of his coat than at the flesh wound. Sherlock rolled away from him instinctively, which stupidly gave the man the ability to roll on top of him, and Sherlock, annoyed, was just in the process of throwing him off when the man went limp on top of him. 

Surprised, Sherlock struggled out from underneath him to see Janine holding a piece of wood and looking horrified. 

“Did I kill him?” she asked, sounding a bit panicked. 

Since the man’s sour breath was currently right in Sherlock’s face, Sherlock pushed him away and said, “No, knocked him unconscious.” Sherlock turned toward the little girl, but Janine beat him to it. 

She was curled up into a ball on the pavement, sobbing. Her eyes weren’t entirely focused, but they also weren’t entirely out of it. Whatever the drug had been, it was wearing off. 

“Don’t worry,” Janine said to her, and gathered her up easily, and the child clung to her. “Don’t worry, the police are coming.”

And indeed they were, the first of them spilling into the alleyway. 

Medical attention was given to the girl, and the revived culprit was being led away in handcuffs, and Sherlock had finished his statement to Lestrade and turned toward Janine, who was waiting for him. 

Sherlock’s focus was on the annoying bloodstain on his sleeve, so that when he said, “You were supposed to—” Janine managed to take him entirely by surprise when she whacked his leg with the same piece of wood she’d used to knock out the kidnapper. “Ow!” exclaimed Sherlock, jumping aside. 

“Whoa,” said Lestrade, stepping forward. 

“Oh, it’s fine,” snapped Janine, and dropped the wood. “I’m not going to _actually_ hurt him. Just what. The bloody hell. Was that?” She punctuated her little sentences with shoves against him. 

Sherlock backed up, trying to get out of her way. Lestrade watched, apparently too astonished to step forward. 

“It was—” Sherlock began. 

“How dare you run back here and take on a dangerous criminal all by yourself?” Janine shouted at him. “What did you think you were doing? My heart was in my throat.”

Sherlock was uncomfortably aware that they were now the focus of all of the attention in the alley. “Shh,” Sherlock tried to say, when he realized she had him up against the wall and he couldn’t back up anymore. 

“And don’t you ever— _ever again_ —stick a mobile in my hand and have me sit on the sidelines like I am too _delicate_ to catch a _criminal_ with you!” 

“That wasn’t—” attempted Sherlock. 

“You could have been killed. I saved your sodding life.”

“I’m fine—”

Janine lifted up his blood-strained sleeve. “He stabbed you.”

Sherlock twitched his arm out of her grasp, self-conscious. “It’s a scratch.”

“Say ‘thank you,’” demanded Janine. 

Sherlock blinked. “What?”

“Say ‘Thank you, Janine, for coming to my aid.’”

Sherlock stared at her. Janine stared back, looking furious. Sherlock was conscious of everyone else staring at the two of them. He had no idea what to do. He half-feared that if he tried to just walk away, Janine would whack him with the piece of wood again. So he said, biting it out, “Thank you, Janine, for coming to my aid.”

“That’s more like it.” Janine looked satisfied, and then startled him even further by leaning forward and tackling him into a tight hug. 

Sherlock, startled, caught Lestrade’s amused gaze before he squeezed his eyes shut to avoid further humiliation. 

Janine released him and took a step back, looking monumentally calmer. “Thank you for catching that little girl’s kidnapper. That was a very good thing you did. Now come home and I’ll take care of that scratch for you.”

Janine, all of her dignity intact, marched out of the alleyway like she was queen of it. 

Lestrade looked at Sherlock and Sherlock had the impression he was close to falling over with the effort of suppressing his laughter. “She’s fun, isn’t she?” said Lestrade. 

“I’m going to make her move out tomorrow,” grumbled Sherlock. 

***

_March 22, 2015_

_Addendum to My Previous Entry_

_Heard from the dentist! Have an actual date! Shezza says he’s going to give me pointers so that I don’t ruin this chance._

***

Sherlock sat in the sitting room and watched Janine clean the scratch on his arm out of all proportion to the seriousness of the injury. It was very different from having John tend to his wounds. John tended to his wounds with a doctor’s practicality: efficient, with a minimum of fuss and movement. Janine was not at all like that. Janine was overly thorough, spent far too much time on the entire affair, should have been finished long ago. But it was strangely nice to be taken care of. It had been strangely nice to have someone come to his rescue, he had to admit. For the longest time, Sherlock had been convinced that only John would ever fill that role, that he had lost that once he had lost John. Janine had become new data, and he was grateful for the inordinate amount of time she spent preoccupied with a tiny scratch in order to give him time to sort out this new data about her. 

“There,” said Janine, sitting back finally. She had piled gauze on top of the wound. It looked absolutely ridiculous. Sherlock doubted his coat would even fit over it. If his coat was even wearable anymore. 

“That’s very…thorough,” said Sherlock, after a skeptical moment of silence. 

“Shut up,” said Janine, and shoved at him playfully, then sat on the floor by his chair, leaning up against him. “You scared me today.”

Sherlock looked down at the top of her head because he couldn’t see the rest of her. “Did you like it?”

“Did I _like_ it? Thinking you were going to be killed right in front of me? No, I didn’t _like_ it.”

“Right, but other than that.”

“Other than that what?” Janine tipped her head back so she could see him. 

And he her, so he was grateful for that. “Other than that, did you like it?”

Janine considered, then shrugged. 

“You were good at it,” Sherlock said. 

Slowly, Janine shifted position enough so she could really see him. “I get the impression you don’t say that very often.”

“On the day we met, you know how you asked me if I had a vacancy for an assistant solving crimes?” said Sherlock. 

***

_March 23, 2015_

_Like I’ve said before, Shezza is a detective. He asked me if I wanted to start tagging along on crimes, and I thought he’d lost his mind, but, actually, I decided to tag along today and it happened to be pretty bloody interesting. Maybe I’m a natural at solving crimes._

_(Oh, and the date with Dentist went well )_

***

Janine insisted on champagne. 

Sherlock said that all they had done was solve a crime, and he solved crimes on most days, but Janine let the cork fly against the wall and then called down the stairs, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Hudson, we’re just celebrating!”

“Have fun, dear!” Mrs. Hudson called back up, and Janine sloshed champagne into teacups because they were clean and there and handed him one. 

“My first crime,” she exclaimed, giddy. 

“You helped solve that kidnapping last week,” Sherlock pointed out. 

Janine shook her head. “That was all you. That one I just tagged along.”

“You just tagged along on this one.”

“Right, but I _knew_ I was tagging along from the very beginning. The last one caught me off-guard. _And_ I didn’t have to almost kill anyone this time.”

“The ones with the official police involved can be less exciting that way,” said Sherlock. 

Janine took a gulp of champagne and said, “You know what we should do?” She leaned over and fiddled with his laptop until salsa music blared out of it. “We should practice dancing!”

Sherlock’s mobile buzzed in his pocket. He shook his head as he took it out of his jacket. “Oh, no. You know I said we were never practicing dancing again whilst you were drunk.” He frowned at his mobile. It was John. Calling him. John never called. Sherlock silenced the mobile and put it on the desk, turning to Janine. 

Janine said, “I’ve had two sips of champagne, I’m not drunk. Who was that ringing you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Sherlock, because he’d been in a good mood. The crime scene had gone well, it had been nice to have an ally who was there just for him, and he didn’t want to ruin everything by reminding himself _yet again_ that it hadn’t been John next to him. He turned to Janine and he said, “Fine. _One_ lesson.”

***

They were still dancing when John arrived in their doorway. Sherlock didn’t notice him until he executed a move that put the doorway into his view, and then he hesitated in his step, which Janine noticed, following his lead and ceasing the dance. 

“John,” Sherlock said, and leaned over to shut off the blaring salsa music. 

“Hello, John,” Janine said, beaming at him. “Champagne?” She lifted up the nearly empty bottle. 

Sherlock was studying John, who looked…slow-witted. John never looked like that. He looked like he couldn’t even process what was going on in front of him. He stared at the champagne in Janine’s hand without recognition. 

“Don’t mind her,” Sherlock said, quickly, wondering how much of a shock it must have been to John to walk in to see him dancing with this woman. “We were just…don’t mind her—”

“Mary’s dead,” said John, his eyes still on the champagne bottle. 

Everything in the flat seemed to go unnaturally quiet. Sherlock stared at John, sure he must have heard him incorrectly. 

“What?” he said. 

John lifted his eyes from the champagne bottle to Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock barely recognized them. They looked…dead. From the inside out. Sherlock wanted to reach for him, but he wasn’t even sure what he would do once he touched him. He just thought that he needed to give John something living so that John would stop looking so dead. 

“Mary’s dead,” said John, and then stopped talking and took a deep breath through his nose, the way John did when he was trying to hold himself together. “And the baby,” he managed, his voice cracking on it. 

“John,” said Sherlock, shocked, because he didn’t know what else to say. What was he supposed to _do_ in this circumstance? There was nothing for him to do, nothing that could fix it, no one he could kill, or threaten, or even save at this point. Because it was all over, it had all happened, to John Watson, and no one had even bothered to—Sherlock suddenly remembered ignoring John’s call. He thought of the mobile on the desk, that he had selfishly set aside because he had wanted to enjoy his evening, and he wondered how he could ever make it up to John, that John had reached out to him and he had _ignored_ him. 

“I couldn’t…” said John. “I didn’t— I couldn’t—”

“Obviously,” said Sherlock, breathlessly, trying to think what to do. _What did people do in this situation?_ In a panic, he seized on the only thing he could think of. “Tea,” he gulped out, grabbing the word like a lifeline. “Do you want tea?”

John stared at him, and Sherlock thought that had been entirely the wrong thing to say. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ , Sherlock cursed himself. 

And then John almost smiled. He said, “Yes. Yes, I want tea.”

***

John sat at the kitchen table. And Sherlock made tea. Sherlock tried to think if he had ever made John tea before. He thought he had, once or twice, but it seemed very long ago and very far away. 

Sherlock was grateful for the activity because it meant he didn't have to come up with anything to say. Then he gave John his tea and sat with his own cup of tea and still didn't come up with anything to say. John looked at the kitchen table and Sherlock looked at the ceiling and drank his tea steadily. When he was done, John still hadn’t even touched his. 

Sherlock wanted to say, _I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you called. I can’t believe I failed you that way. I will spend the rest of our lives making it up to you._ He wanted to say, _I’m sorry that I gave her to you only to have you lose her anyway._ He wanted to say, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for not loving you the way you deserved to be loved so you went and found someone else and then you lost that someone else and so all of this is, in some way, my fault._

What he said was, “I’ll play for you.”

John blinked and looked up at him, looking dazed to find himself in the kitchen at Baker Street, as if he’d forgotten he’d gone there. “What?”

“I’ll play for you. So you can sleep.”

John took a deep breath and let it out again, and Sherlock watched him process that Sherlock had always known that his violin-playing helped John’s nightmares. Sherlock didn’t know if they would be different nightmares now, impervious nightmares, but John had been up for almost forty-eight straight hours and needed to sleep. Sherlock had deduced everything he needed to know about Mary and the baby by that time: labor going poorly, baby in distress, Mary insisting they save the baby at the expense of her, and, in the end, the inability to save either. Mary had turned out not to be selfish in the end. Sherlock didn’t know if he was glad of that or not. If she’d been selfish, she might at least have survived. 

At any rate, Sherlock didn’t need to know anything more than he already knew, which was that he’d put John Watson together again once before, when he had arrived with a psychosomatic limp and an inability to know what he needed. And Sherlock was willing to do it again. 

Sherlock stood and said, briskly, thinking John needed him to take charge now, the way he had in the early days so very long ago, alternately bullying and charming John into giving himself what he needed, “You can have your room, of course. It’s just as you left it.”

John looked up at him. He said, shaking his head a little bit, “No. I have to—”

“There’s nothing you have to do now except rest. Go on.”

“You don’t understand,” said John, dully, and stared into his teacup. “You don’t understand how much there is to do when someone dies unexpectedly. I’ve already done this before. I’ve already…” John looked at him suddenly, and his eyes were no longer dull, they were sparking with something close to fury. And Sherlock was almost relieved to see it. “You have _no idea_ ,” said John. 

And Sherlock didn’t. Because the last time John had had to unexpectedly bury someone, it had been _him_. 

Sherlock swallowed and said, “I know. But this time I’m here, and so this time you don’t have to do it alone. I will help. I will do it all, if you want me to. I will not let you do it again alone.”

John held his gaze for a very long moment. And he said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

“It’s not,” Sherlock said, immediately, firmly. 

“Why these things happen to me. It’s my fault.” 

“No.” Sherlock leaned over him, looming, and John stared at him. “It isn’t your fault. I don’t know why it happened, because it doesn’t make sense, because you deserve all good things, all of the best things. So I don’t know why it happened. But I know it wasn’t your fault. And I’m never wrong. Am I ever wrong?”

After a moment, John almost smiled. “You’re never wrong.”

That wasn’t true, and they both knew it, but Sherlock was relieved he’d said it. “Let me play for you. Go to bed and sleep and in the morning I’ll be here and we’ll…You won’t be alone,” he said, helplessly, because he didn’t know what else to say and it seemed like the most important thing for John to know at the moment. He had to know that he wasn’t going to be alone, that Sherlock had failed him when he’d reached out to him earlier but he would never do it again. 

John nodded once and seemed to droop. He dragged his way upstairs without a single word, and Sherlock walked into the sitting room to retrieve his violin and was startled to see Janine there, standing next to the window, looking nervous and stricken. 

The sight of her confused him. He reached for his violin and said, vaguely, “I forgot you were here.”

“I know. What can I do, Sherlock? To help?”

Sherlock plucked at a string. Tuned it. Said, “Tell me what _I’m_ supposed to do.”

Janine gave him a tremulous smile and said, “I think you’re doing it.”

And Sherlock played.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

In the days that followed, Sherlock was the first line of defense to anybody who was trying to get to John. He confiscated his mobile and fielded every well-meaning condolence call. He was harsh and abrupt and rude, but he knew they expected nothing less from Sherlock Holmes, so he didn’t feel compelled to be better. John would have, and he knew the idea of it exhausted John, so Sherlock appointed himself the point of contact for all such things. He also took it upon himself to reply to all of the e-mails John was getting, sticking them afterwards in a folder that he hid on the laptop in case John ever wanted to see them. 

Sherlock only let people into the flat to see John whom he trusted, and that was a precious few. He let in Mrs. Hudson, who was baking so much that their sitting room began to resemble a tearoom, and Sherlock knew that Janine started to take some of the baked goods out to give to the homeless network to distribute. John made game attempts to eat some of the favorites that Mrs. Hudson was churning out for him, but Sherlock was keeping track of what John was eating and it was an alarmingly small amount. Sherlock thought he would deal with John’s appetite at a later point in time, when he’d had some time to grieve. He couldn’t decide if taking him to Angelo’s would be a good idea or not. 

Sherlock let in Lestrade, because he thought John might benefit from having a normal bloke around. Lestrade was awkward, didn’t know what to do with John’s grief, and Sherlock understood. In an odd way, Sherlock felt more allied with Lestrade over the mess of the situation than he ever had before.

Sherlock let in Molly, because Molly had long been his go-to for inspiration about how Regular People ought to react to things. Molly was kind and sympathetic and had a long, low conversation with John involving lots of murmurs, and when she left she hugged Sherlock without a word and then hugged Janine as well and had another long, low conversation with her. Sherlock asked what it had been about, but Janine had just shaken her head. 

Sherlock let in Mike Stamford, even though he had not seen fit to go to the wedding. Sherlock wasn’t sure seeing Mike did John any good at all, but Sherlock had felt he’d owed Mike something or other for introducing the two of them in the first place. 

Sherlock did not let in Harry. Sherlock met her at the door and waited out her drunken sobbing about how _sorry_ she was that she had let John down, and then he told her that he would convey the message. He later told John that Harry had stopped by and sent her condolences and John had just nodded and not looked particularly regretful that he had not seen her, so Sherlock thought that had been the right choice. 

Sherlock let in Mycroft, only because he didn’t feel like going to the effort to keep him out. John was right that unexpected deaths resulted in a million decisions, large and small, that had to be made, and Sherlock was walking a tightrope of handling as much as possible whilst also making sure that John didn’t feel excluded from everything. 

When Mycroft arrived, John was in the shower and Janine was spreading stale scones to the geese in Regent’s Park and Sherlock was sitting at the desk looking at his Funeral Task List spreadsheet. 

Sherlock glanced at Mycroft and said, “Have you really come to pay your respects?”

“Of course I have. And to see how you’re holding up.”

“How _I’m_ holding up?” echoed Sherlock, blankly. “I’m fine.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow at him. 

Sherlock closed his laptop and hated him. “John’s in the shower.”

“Do you really feel the need to tell me something so obvious?” Mycroft sat in Sherlock’s chair and said, annoyingly, “I’ll wait.”

“I don’t see what for,” snapped Sherlock. “I’ll tell him you were here.”

“You’re in a lovely mood,” remarked Mycroft. “Then again, logistics always did set you off.”

Sherlock grit his teeth. “I don’t have a problem with _logistics_.”

“Do you need any help?” asked Mycroft. 

“Not from you,” snarled Sherlock, automatically. 

Mycroft turned in the chair, shifting to make sure Sherlock could see his face. “Sherlock,” he said, evenly. “Look at me.”

Sherlock’s inclination was to disobey, but he didn’t: He looked at Mycroft. 

Who said, calmly, his face unaccustomedly soft with something Sherlock might have called sympathy on anyone else, “I’m asking if you need help. With anything. For John. If there’s something giving you trouble, I could smooth the way for you. Something you’re trying to find but can’t. I am offering you my assistance. Genuinely. No score-keeping this time.”

Sherlock looked at him for a moment, astonished at the apparent sincerity, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. I think we’re fine. Almost done.” Sherlock scrubbed his hand over his face and wondered when he’d last felt so exhausted. “Did John really do all of this? For me? When he thought I was…?”

“Of course he did. He wouldn’t let anyone else do it. I told him I ought to, as your official next of kin, and he said that you’d roll over in your grave if he let me plan it. He was very concerned with your state of eternal rest.”

It sounded like John. Sherlock sighed tiredly and thought that he was never going to make up to John all of the things he owed him. 

The shower turned off and the bathroom door opened and John emerged, wrapped in his dressing gown. He gave Mycroft a weary, resigned look, and Sherlock, to save John the energy of the interaction, was about to say that Mycroft was just leaving when Mycroft said it himself. 

He rose and said, “I was just on my way out. Do keep in touch, Sherlock.” He paused by John and just said, “I was sorry to hear about your loss.”

It was simple, but it sounded heartfelt, and Sherlock was amazed and John looked appreciative. “Thanks,” he said, and then watched Mycroft walk down the stairs. Then he glanced back at Sherlock. “He never said that to me about you. I guess that means Mary and the baby really are dead.”

***

Everyone told John the funeral was lovely. John felt odd about taking credit for it when Sherlock had planned it. He didn’t know how Sherlock had managed to plan such a conventionally lovely funeral, but he apparently had. 

How could a funeral be lovely anyway? The contradiction made John want to reach out and break things. 

The only thing that didn’t make John want to reach out and break things was Sherlock, Sherlock always nearby and watching, watching, watching. Sherlock who swept in to intercept people from conversations whenever John couldn’t deal with them one second longer, always knowing unerringly accurately where that line was. Sherlock who kept things running smoothly, beckoning mysterious personages over, and guests kept circling through and food kept being passed around and fresh glasses of water kept getting pressed into John’s hand. 

John hated funerals. He hated the finality of them, the way they were such an inescapable dividing line, the way they forced you to say good-bye. John Watson had been married with a baby on the way, and the life he had seen stretching before him had abruptly vanished. Now he was untethered and Sherlock was an anchor, Sherlock was the only anchor he was able to find, Sherlock had been his anchor for so long that John couldn’t remember how he had survived without him. 

John walked up to him blindly and said, “ _Please_ get me out of here,” and his voice cracked on the last word. Luckily Sherlock nudged him in the right direction without another word, so they were outside before John had a complete breakdown. 

Sherlock bundled him into a car, and John took deep breaths to keep his composure, and Sherlock had already begun driving before John thought to say, “Where are we going?”

“Away,” said Sherlock, shortly, without looking at him.

John closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat and let Sherlock drive. He thought of the way Mary had sounded when she had laughed at his inability to hang straight the pictures she’d bought for the nursery wall. He thought of the nursery itself, pink and yellow and scattered with adorable baby animals, waiting for a baby he was never going to get to meet. And he thought of Sherlock, beside him, who had been a rock through this whole thing. He said, “I can’t remember what I did without you. I should be able to remember that, shouldn’t I? How do I not remember what it was like before I met you?”

Sherlock said nothing. 

John opened his eyes and looked at Sherlock’s profile. His lips were drawn into a harsh, straight line, so unlike their usual pout. “Are you listening to me?” he asked, wondering if he was sitting there pouring out his heart and Sherlock was busy making deductions about the state of the motorway. 

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “You’ve had an exhausting day, and a very large trauma, and you’ve been relying on me, so your brain is erasing life without me because it can’t confront the idea of it right now. Once you settle down from the shock you’ll remember again.”

John sighed and closed his eyes again. “I don’t know. I think you’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong, remember?” Sherlock reminded him. 

“That’s not true. And I think I did cause this.” John said it without realizing he was going to say it. 

“You didn’t,” Sherlock insisted, automatically. “It’s not your fault.”

John bit his tongue and looked out the window and didn’t think it was a good idea to say the dark thoughts that whispered to him in the dark of the night: that he hadn’t appreciated Mary and the baby, that he hadn’t deserved them, that he’d lost them because when he’d had them he had spent all of his time longing for Sherlock instead. The sinister thought curled its way through his brain again: that he had lost Mary and he had lost the baby but he still had Sherlock and hadn’t he always secretly harboured the belief that Sherlock was actually the most important thing in his life? That he could never shake the instinct that Sherlock, no matter what else might happen, would always possess more of him than he wanted to acknowledge. 

You secretly wanted Sherlock all along, said that terrible voice in his head, and now you’ve got him, and it’s too late to change your choice now. 

And the worst part was John wanted Mary and the baby back but he couldn’t wish for Sherlock to be dead in their place. He wanted everyone. He had just wanted…the woman he loved and his daughter and his best friend. Other people got to have that, it didn’t seem like too much to ask, why couldn’t he ever be completely happy? 

Sherlock drove and drove and drove. John pretended to doze and took little interest in where they were going. Eventually, Sherlock stopped and John lifted his head and opened his eyes and looked around. It was nearly twilight, and they were parked in front of a small, charming cottage. 

John blinked at it. “Where are we?”

“Sussex,” said Sherlock, as if that answered all questions, and got out of the car. 

John followed his lead and watched in astonishment as Sherlock pulled out a key and unlocked the front door. “Is this your cottage?” he asked, in disbelief. 

“Janine’s,” said Sherlock, and flipped on the light. 

The cottage was small and sparsely furnished and it had the cold, musty feel of an unlived-in place. John shivered unconsciously, noticing only when Sherlock said, “I can light a fire.”

John watched him walk over to the fireplace and frown at it. “It needs wood,” John supplied, helpfully. 

“Well, what kind of idiotic system is _that_?” said Sherlock, plainly annoyed. 

John laughed suddenly. He laughed until he couldn’t breathe. He laughed until he realized he was sitting on the floor in a Sussex cottage belonging to his best friend’s new best friend, his head pillowed against his drawn-up knees, sobbing. And now that he had begun, he let himself. He sobbed for every moment with Mary he was never going to get to have, every anniversary, every birthday. They had still been such a work-in-progress and he had wanted so much to see how and where they would end up, what their retirement would look like. 

He sobbed for the baby, who had never even drawn a breath. He sobbed for the fact that he would never know what she looked like, her light in her eyes when she laughed, the way she would smile. He would never hear her voice, teach her to read, learn her favourite color.

He felt like he had lived an entire interrupted lifetime by the time he pulled himself together. When he looked up, he realized that Sherlock was gone. 

John took a moment to collect himself, pushing his hands over his face in a ridiculous effort to pretend he had not just been crying like a little boy. He pulled himself to his feet, feeling stiff and achy, and called, cautiously, “Sherlock?” There was no answer. John pushed aside an irrational lick of abandoned panic and stuck his head in the next room—empty kitchen—and walked back to stand at the bottom of the stairs. “Sherlock?” he called up the staircase, and, when there was still no answer, he hesitated and looked over his shoulder before going to the window. 

Sherlock was outside, leaning against the hood of the car, holding his mobile awkwardly up in the air while he texted on it. His coat was drawn tight around him and his breath was fogging. Cold had descended with the night. 

John was so relieved to see Sherlock, to not be alone, that he had to take another moment, sucking in a bracing breath and swiping his hands over his face one more time before walking outside. “What are you doing?” he asked, trying to sound casual, as Sherlock continued to squint up at his mobile. 

“This is the only place I can get the phone to get reception,” said Sherlock. 

“Right.” John had deduced that much, but he didn’t feel in the mood to be sarcastic with Sherlock about deductive skills. “But what are you doing?”

Sherlock hesitated, and John was reminded suddenly of how little they had seen of each other in the past few months. He had fallen into the old co-dependency with Sherlock but really they had been separated by a vast, awkward chasm for a very long time. Which was, he reminded himself, why he had spent so much time trying to determine Sherlock’s place in his life, because he had missed him so much.

Sherlock lowered his mobile and said, “I’m tweeting.”

John blinked, sure he’d heard him incorrectly. “You’re what?”

“I have a Twitter account.”

“ _You_ have a Twitter account?”

“I have several. They help to pass the time.” Sherlock sounded defensive. 

“Okay.” John settled against the car next to Sherlock and realized he was smiling. Sherlock, he thought, had made him _smile_ , against all odds, after everything that had happened, and John wanted to burrow into him in gratitude. Instead, he just said, “What are your Twitter accounts?”

“Well, I’ve just started one from the perspective of a cat in Sussex,” said Sherlock. 

“Let me see,” said John, and peeked over Sherlock’s shoulder. The tweets said, _Nothing is happening here_ , and then, _Still nothing is happening here_. “You’re a lunatic,” said John, and meant it in the best possible way. 

Sherlock pocketed his mobile and said, “Janine got rid of the beehives in the back. They would have been the best thing about this place.” 

John said, seriously, “Thank you for bringing me here.”

Sherlock burrowed into his coat in a move John recognized as being defensive, seeking comfort from the coat for a situation in which he felt out of his depth. “It was Janine’s idea. I didn’t want you to… Not in Baker Street, where you’d remember. I wanted to take you somewhere you’d never been before, so you wouldn’t have to confront the grief every day. Janine suggested this. I honestly thought she’d sold the place.”

John wanted to say: _So it wasn’t really her idea. It was yours, to get me away somewhere I could completely break down, to have it be far away, so I could get back to London and start to rebuild. All she did was supply the venue._ But John decided to let Sherlock have the distance from the emotion of the decision. 

John looked at the cottage and said, “I’ve been thinking about the pink lady.”

“Stillborn daughter,” said Sherlock. 

“Yes,” said John, because of course Sherlock would also have made the connection. John took a deep breath, because he didn’t know what else to say after that. 

They sat in silence, and John thought Sherlock would let him sit in silence for hours and hours. All night, if he thought John needed it. 

“We can go home now,” John said. 

“We can stay as long as you like,” said Sherlock. 

“I’m ready to go home,” said John. 

Sherlock straightened from the hood of the car. John looked at him and thought of all his chasing thoughts and hugged him before he knew he was going to, hugged him fiercely, hugged him so tightly, as if he could make sure that he never lost him if he hugged him tightly enough in this moment. He pressed his face against the collar of Sherlock’s coat, turned up even now. 

Sherlock, after a moment, hugged him back carefully, as if he thought John might break. He didn’t so much hug him back, actually, as he did give him permission to hug him as tightly as he was, hold him in the moment, let him have it. 

John said out loud what he had been thinking for so very long. “I couldn’t bear to lose you, too. You have to stay. Do you hear me? Because I can’t lose you.”

Sherlock took a deep breath, a breath John felt expand the chest he was pressed against. Sherlock said, “You won’t. I promise. Please don’t worry about that, John. I will always be right here.”

As if the promise gave him permission to, John scrabbled just a little bit closer to Sherlock, clinging just a little harder. He thought it was possible, for a brief, crazy moment, that Sherlock rested his head against John’s, but he could just as easily have imagined it. 

***

Janine could see the writing on the wall. There was no way in hell John Watson was leaving Baker Street anytime soon. 

Janine did not blame either Sherlock or John for this. John was sad and hurting, and he needed to heal, and it made sense that, in such a state, he would have instinctively turned to Sherlock. And Sherlock had always been so in love with John that there was no way Sherlock would do anything, ever, that might jeopardize John’s ability to recover from everything. 

And Janine didn’t really even mind having to find her own place. It was about time, after all. She had imposed on Sherlock long enough. John was always very cordial to her, and Sherlock was as absently fond as he had ever been, but their worlds were each other, wrapped up in every movement the other made. Sherlock watched John from the instant he woke up in the morning until whenever he finally fell asleep. And John depended on that watching, relaxed into it. 

It made Janine nervous, honestly, how much John obviously needed Sherlock’s attention, how dependent he was on it. 

But the whole thing made Janine nervous. 

 

Janine worried that Sherlock and John, both being idiots, were just going to fall back into Baker Street life the way Baker Street life had once been, and they weren’t going to talk about anything that they needed to talk about, and eventually, once again, John would break Sherlock’s heart. Janine didn’t think Sherlock would break John’s heart, Sherlock was far too careful of it, far too aware of the way he had broken it the first time around. Janine was quite sure that John still didn’t see—had never seen—how much he had broken Sherlock’s, and so he would blunder right into it. 

But there was nothing Janine could do about that. She couldn’t very well give a man who was grieving the death of a wife and child a lecture about hurting someone else. John didn’t deserve that; John was hurting enough himself. And Janine couldn’t lecture Sherlock about it, either. Not really. Sherlock had always thought John walked on water, and any word against him now would just make Janine look like a vicious and jealous bitch. 

She was trapped, and she knew it. It was a special kind of hell to be forced to watch two people make the same mistakes with each other all over again. 

John began making tea again. He made it slowly and carefully, as if determined to get it right, but he made them endless cups of it. Sherlock drank so much tea that Janine thought he ought to swim instead of walk; Janine took to turning out the cups of tea into many of the various plants that people had sent in condolence. Sherlock caught on and made her give him data about which plants had received how much tea, treating it like an experiment. 

“Maybe I’ll cook something,” John said, cautiously, one morning, several weeks after the funeral. 

Janine had been curled up in a patch of sun on the sofa, reading the newspaper. John was in his chair, which he’d had taken out of his bedroom, saying something about how it was silly to clutter up the bedroom just because Sherlock wanted a clearer view into the kitchen. Janine hadn’t been able to tell whether John was just humoring that explanation or _seriously thought_ that was why Sherlock had had the chair removed. Idiots, the both of them, was Janine’s opinion. 

Sherlock was scrolling through cases in his inbox, but he looked up and seemed pleased. Janine imagined Sherlock thought this was evidence of John’s progress. 

“That thing with peas that you like,” said John. 

“Yes,” agreed Sherlock. 

“Do you like peas, Janine?” asked John. 

Janine didn’t. She thought if she said she didn’t, Sherlock would throw a dagger at her. (Surely he would be able to produce a dagger from somewhere on that desk.)

“Love them,” she said, with a huge smile for John’s benefit. 

“I’ll run to the shops,” John said, and it was the first outing he had proposed. He had taken an extended leave from work and had not left the flat since the funeral. He looked excited at the prospect of it now. 

Janine listened to him go down the stairs and watched Sherlock glance out the window to watch him exit. 

She said, “Is it good, this thing with peas?”

“It’s dreadful,” said Sherlock. “He’s a horrible cook. Be thinking about what you’d like to get for takeaway.” Sherlock went back to his laptop. “But I think it’s good that he’s left the house. I think he’s getting some energy and interest back. If I could get him intrigued by a case, I think he’d be good as new.”

“I don’t think it happens that easily,” sighed Janine. 

Sherlock glared at her. 

“You’re going to ask him to move back in, aren’t you?” said Janine. 

“He’s already moved back in,” said Sherlock, matter-of-factly, still scrolling through his inbox. 

“I know. Which is why I think I should move out.”

Sherlock looked up now. She finally truly had his attention. “You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t.”

“John likes you. You like John. Don’t you?”

He was anxious, she saw. Anxious at the idea that the two people on the planet he liked best might not like each other. 

“I am tremendously fond of John, and you know that. But I’ve never fancied being the third wheel.”

“You’re not a third wheel. Such a ridiculous expression. I’ve always hated it. Some things have three wheels. _Most_ things have three wheels, at least. In fact, most things have a fourth. Stay.”

Janine sighed. “I worry about you,” she admitted. “I worry about you and John.”

“Why should you?”

“He married a woman who killed you. I mean, God rest her soul, but, yeah.”

“I told him to marry her.”

“I suppose you think it’s a good idea to have someone in this flat who does everything you tell them to?”

“The best idea I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re wrong,” said Janine. 

“John is fine. I am fine. And if you wish to move out, I won’t stop you, but having you here is fine, too. We’re a nice unit. We could all solve crimes together.” Sherlock looked bright at the prospect. 

Janine thought of the jealousy on John’s face when he had walked in on them playing Wii together and tried to imagine what John would think if she elbowed her way in on his crime-scene assistant role in his presence. 

She said, noncommittally, “Yeah. Maybe.”

***

Lestrade texted about the murders. One each hour for the past three hours. Serial killer. Surely, if he was moving this quickly, easily caught, and yet the police were flummoxed. Of course they were. 

Sherlock practically pounced on John where he was sitting in his chair, waving the mobile around in front of him. “ _Serial killer_ , John.”

“Ah,” said John, wryly, looking at him over the top of his newspaper. “Our first date.”

“You know I can’t turn down a _serial killer_ ,” begged Sherlock. “Come with me.”

John hesitated. Sherlock saw it. Sherlock had been flinging cases at him for weeks now, hoping something would catch his interest, and John had shown not a single inclination to take one. He’d been improving, had even gone back to work—at a different surgery, one without Mary memories—and Sherlock thought that was an excellent sign. But John was a doctor _and a soldier_ , and he’d have only recovered half of his identity until Sherlock could get him to take interest in something a bit dangerous. 

And here, being presented with a _serial killer_ , he hesitated. An active serial killer, definitely dangerous. Sherlock knew in that moment: He had him. 

Sherlock smiled at him, and John frowned, and Sherlock knew that he knew. 

“I’m supposed to work today,” he pointed out. 

“Call in,” said Sherlock, and turned as John folded the paper. “Coming along, Janine?”

“No serial killers for me, ta,” said Janine, from where she was painting her nails at the desk. “I have finally managed to schedule another date with the dentist.”

“A third date?” said Sherlock. “Really?”

“Is that all?” John said, pulling his jacket on. “You’ve been dating him for a while.”

“Busy schedules,” Janine hedged, and Sherlock knew that Janine was really saying, _I’ve been busy helping you grieve_ , but John didn’t even catch that, and Sherlock was heartened by John not catching a reference to his grief. 

“Well. Third date. You know what that means.” John winked at her. 

“Get out,” Janine said, and threw a pillow at his head. 

John actually laughed, and Sherlock’s heart was soaring high above them as he followed him down the stairs. 

“What does it mean?” he asked, when they got to the street, because he hadn’t wanted to admit he didn’t know before, he’d just wanted to allow himself to be dizzy with joy that John seemed _better_. 

John shook his head and said, “ _Sex_ , Sherlock,” and Sherlock hailed a cab.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Sherlock had thought the case would be a good idea, but he was worried he’d been wrong about that. John seemed reflective and quiet when they got back, where Sherlock would have expected him, in other days, to be buzzing and jubilant, as full of adrenaline as Sherlock was. 

The flat was dark. Janine must still be out on her date, and Sherlock reflected on the importance of third dates, watching as John turned on lights, put the kettle on for tea. 

He stood in the kitchen doorway awkwardly and said, “Was it wrong?”

“What?” John looked at him as if his thoughts had been a million miles away. 

“Was it wrong? To take you on the case? I thought you’d enjoy it. You always used to enjoy it.” Sherlock wondered why he was saying this, but also felt that he was desperate enough to say it. He wanted _John_ back, and what if Janine was right in her suspicion—never stated out loud, but expertly deduced by Sherlock—that he never would quite be his John again? 

John, after a moment, turned away from the kettle and regarded him inscrutably. “It wasn’t wrong.” He walked over to him, and Sherlock stayed where he was, holding his breath. John looked up at him, so close now that Sherlock could make out the gradations of color in the irises of his beautiful eyes. “You light up, you know.” 

Sherlock had no idea what he meant. He made a tiny querying sound. 

“You have so much life in you,” continued John, sounding awed. “I watched you today and I couldn’t… You used to do that to me. I would just _look_ at you and I would…”

John trailed off, staring at Sherlock’s mouth. 

Sherlock, confused, said, “You would what?”

John said, “God, I just want _one second_ when I feel that way again.” And then he closed his hands in Sherlock’s upturned coat collar and kissed him. 

Sherlock was not expecting the kiss, so he had his eyes wide open when John swooped toward him, and Sherlock’s vision became a blur of _John_ , and a moment of panic, because John wasn’t supposed to be kissing him, John really shouldn’t be kissing him—

“Kiss me back, Sherlock,” John murmured to him, and dotted kisses across his jawline, underneath his ear, and Sherlock gasped and tipped his head and watched the room tip likewise. He had his hands trapped in John’s hair as if John was the most solid thing he had ever found, the only thing not see-sawing around him. “Please just kiss me back.” John’s lips began to retrace their path, back towards Sherlock’s mouth. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted…” John’s mouth hovered over Sherlock, breathing unsteadily, the rush of his exhalation trembling over Sherlock’s lips, and Sherlock’s eyes drooped, closed. He swayed toward John, and he felt like he wasn’t making any decision at all, like somewhere along the way he’d been mesmerized and this had been inevitable, he’d been making his way to this moment. “God, Sherlock,” groaned John, “give me just one moment where you—”

Sherlock kissed the rest of his sentence out of his mouth. And that was it, thought Sherlock. That was _it_. Because now that he was kissing John Watson, he went absolutely to pieces. He was never going to stop kissing John Watson. He was going to kiss John Watson until they died of dehydration because he wasn’t going to let them ever stop for something as tedious as _water_. Who needed such a thing when there was John Watson? 

Sherlock licked at John’s mouth, cataloguing, sorting, his hands keeping John still for him. John made a sound in his throat that Sherlock had never heard him make before and which he thought was so delicious that he wanted to ask him to make it again, except that John turned the kiss around, and everything in Sherlock’s head went blank in a loud feedback loop of _JohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohn_. 

There was an insane flurry of movement, of clothing being shed, of stumbling steps being made, until they fell onto Sherlock’s bed together, half-into and half-out of assorted articles of clothing. 

John landed on top, then sat up, straddling, sucking on the side of Sherlock’s throat, sweeping his hands up and down Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock gasped and arched and pressed and pulled and thought that no one in the history of humanity had ever felt the way Sherlock Holmes felt with John Watson’s hands on his body. It was _impossible_. 

And somehow, in the middle of all of it, even though his blood had turned to fire in his veins and he was clearly burning from the inside out and was never going to survive any of this, and ninety-seven percent of his synapses were completely off-line and focused entirely on whether John’s mouth might follow his fingers were they were rubbing around a nipple, the other three percent of his synapses managed to say: _This is a mistake. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s sad and grief-stricken and you’re warm and alive, and you could be anybody, anybody, anybody, and is that how you want him? Is that how you want this?_

Stupid three percent, thought Sherlock, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to concentrate on John. On _John_. 

Damn it. 

“John,” Sherlock managed, his voice so hoarse he barely recognized it. 

John misunderstood, mistook it for encouragement, for a request that he slide back up his body and capture his mouth with his own. Sherlock kissed back and hated himself for kissing back, wished he could resist it, but it was _John_ , kissing him like he wanted him, like he’d always wanted him. Sherlock didn’t want to wake up from this dream, he wanted to kiss John, wanted to have John with the self-destructive selfishness of Mary, who had got this from the very beginning, John like this, John with her, God, he had to get John to stop and all he did was keep kissing because the three percent of his synapses that was still functioning was being ignored by the other ninety-seven percent that was busy groaning into John Watson’s mouth. 

John let him up for air, and Sherlock clawed at the oxygen, trying to get at least five percent of his synapses online so his resistance would be effective. 

“John, I don’t think—” Sherlock managed. 

“Good,” John cut him off roughly and kissed him just as roughly, brief and gasp-inducing. “ _Don’t_ think—I don’t want a thought in your beautiful head other than me—I’ve wanted you—for so long—don’t think—don’t think—just be mine.”

Sherlock was confused, his head swirling, thoughts addled. What the hell was John _talking_ about? His kisses were unspooling Sherlock, positively undoing him. Sherlock felt as if he would do anything to make sure they just _never stopped_ , every time he drew away to speak, Sherlock followed him, desperate for his mouth again, for the taste of him. Sherlock had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted John Watson, and he had always known that would be the case. The high of John flooded through him and threatened to overwhelm him. 

“John,” said Sherlock, begging, and he didn’t know anymore if he was begging him be stronger than he was and stop, or begging him to never, ever, ever stop, no matter what he did. 

“Yes,” John hissed against him, and kissed and kissed and kissed him. “Just like that—the only thought in your head—my name—say it again—and again—and again—” At some point when his kisses had been keeping Sherlock so off-balance that he couldn’t find up from down or left from right, he’d managed to get into Sherlock’s pants, and he drew a hand up Sherlock’s erection, and Sherlock heard the cry he made, tearing his mouth away from John’s because it was all _too much_ in that moment. 

John stilled, paused, and Sherlock’s vision cleared enough to look up at him. He was suddenly scared John had finally come to his senses, and Sherlock had just been thinking that John ought to come to his senses, but now the idea of it made Sherlock almost shiver with terror. Because he wanted him, Sherlock realized, and he had never thought of it so coherently before. He had been prepared to live without John for the rest of his life, and he would still do it, but he wanted just this _one night_. And if John hated him in the morning, Sherlock thought it would be worth it for this one night when John had begged him to be his. 

John was not going to stop. John looked down at Sherlock, eyes alight with a predatory sort of triumph that turned Sherlock’s shiver of fear into a shudder of pleasure. John smiled, filthy and possessive, although when he leaned down to kiss Sherlock it was almost gentle. 

One night, thought Sherlock, and squeezed his eyes shut and kissed him back. If he was only getting one night, he was going to make it bloody well count. 

If John had had Sherlock pinned in almost any other circumstance, Sherlock would never have succeeded in flipping their positions. But John, distracted by the kiss, didn’t know what had happened until he was on his back, blinking up at Sherlock. Sherlock gave into a ridiculous impulse to kiss the tip of John’s nose, and John looked momentarily quizzical, as if he was going to ask. Sherlock realized that he’d tripped up the sexual vocabulary, done something that moved them outside of _lust_ and into _affection_ , and if John asked, in just that moment, Sherlock was worried that it would all spill out of him, everything. _I love you, I love you, I’ve always loved you, I loved you the moment I saw you and I never, ever stopped, you are where I start and where I end and I don’t exist without you and I can’t, I can’t, I can’t_. Sherlock knew he would say it if he let himself, so instead he kissed John, deeply, passionately, until John rocked against him and tangled his hands pleasantly in his hair and forgot to be quizzical about having the tip of his nose kissed. 

Sherlock wanted to kiss every bit of John’s skin. One night to last a lifetime and he needed to have all the evidence. Luckily, John did not seem averse to this plan of Sherlock’s. John kept his hands in Sherlock’s hair as Sherlock pressed wet kisses to John’s quivering abdomen, licking up sweat. “Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock,” said John desperately as Sherlock nosed his way down the trail of hair disappearing into the trousers John was still half-wearing. Sherlock had to pause with his nose basically in John’s crotch to keep from falling to pieces over the way John sounded when he said his name just like that, and he carefully tucked it into the most precious corner of his mind palace to be cherished forever, this unexpected data that he had never hoped to even wish for, the sound of his name in John’s voice like _that_. 

And then Sherlock tugged him out of trousers and pants. 

Sherlock had no idea what to do after that, and he was worried John would notice, that John would have a moment of hesitation if he finally determined that Sherlock had never done anything remotely like this before. People made such a big deal about virginity. John would make such a big deal about virginity. Sherlock didn’t want to stop the forward progress of their evening, so he avoided John’s erection entirely and made his way back up John’s chest. He paused over his scar and then leaned down and tongued it, tasting it, unsure whether he was cursing it or reverencing it, this thing that had almost taken John from him, this thing that had brought John to him. 

“Enough,” whispered John, after a while, his hands clenched hard in Sherlock’s hair, his body trembling underneath his. 

Sherlock took a moment, eyes closed, to catalogue the particular feel of John’s tremors against him, the peculiar sensation of it. He rested his forehead against John’s shoulder and tried to breathe. All one hundred percent of his synapses, including the three percent that had finally given in, were on desperate overload. 

“Don’t let yourself get sidetracked there,” John said, his voice both light and rough, and Sherlock felt the clumsy kiss he brushed into Sherlock’s hair. 

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Sherlock whispered into John’s skin. “You utterly _destroy_ me. You _wreck_ me. I look at you and can’t breathe, on a regular basis, because you’re so you that I… How can you exist? How can you _exist_?”

John was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Sherlock,” sounding almost curious, and used his hands in Sherlock’s hair to tug Sherlock’s head up, to force him to look at him. 

Sherlock kept talking, feeling reckless and unable to stop. He looked down into John Watson’s gorgeous eyes and he _talked_. “You are the most impossible thing,” he said. “The most astonishing thing. How can other people meet you and talk to you and move on with their lives as if…as if…as if you aren’t _extraordinary_ , as if it’s perfectly normal to meet a person like you?”

“Sherlock,” said John. Not curiosity. Shock. 

And Sherlock kept talking. Why did Sherlock _keep talking_? “And I’m so sorry,” he babbled. “I’m so sorry that I did to you what I did to you. I didn’t know that you would care, how could a person like you _care_ about a person like me?”

“Sherlock,” said John, and swept his hands through Sherlock’s hair, and now it was neither curiosity nor shock, it was tender and gentle and if Sherlock closed his eyes he could convince himself it was _loving_. “Stop talking,” said John, so sweetly, and tipped Sherlock’s head down and kissed his forehead. 

“I’ve done this all wrong, haven’t I?” mumbled Sherlock, into the lack of space between their bodies. 

“No, you haven’t.” John wrapped his arms around Sherlock and held him close and Sherlock let himself burrow cautiously into him. “Oh my God, no, you haven’t.” 

John didn’t say anything more for a little while, and Sherlock was grateful for the silence, grateful for the time to push everything inside him back where it came from, where it was normally so carefully kept, close to his heart, locked safely away. 

“Sherlock,” said John, into his ear, his voice low and intimate and Sherlock wished his life would end on that sound, just that. “In a second, I’m going to start moving and everything is going to get a bit frantic, I suspect, and so I want to just take this moment to tell you and to have you know that I’m saying it as clear-headedly as I can be right now.” 

John paused, and Sherlock nodded against him. 

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” said John Watson into his ear, and Sherlock was still reeling from that when John said, “Now lick my hand.”

Sherlock obeyed, filing away more data, and then John moved, wriggling, closing his hand around Sherlock’s erection. Sherlock sobbed with pleasure, instinctively thrusting into and against John, friction against John’s erection. John said, “Christ,” and Sherlock, suddenly desperate to make John as frantic as he had predicted, licked his own hand and joined the fray, and everything was a mess of arching and grasping and John said, “Oh, _Christ_ ,” again just before he climaxed and Sherlock bit into John’s collarbone with a muffled exclamation as stars burst inside of him. 

Afterwards John was sleepy. Sherlock listened to his breaths slow and kept cataloguing everything, his mind palace in overdrive. He was mentally flinging impressions into it, desperate not to lose a single moment of this in the future. Meanwhile, John was behaving as if this was not the most miraculous thing to have ever happened. John was falling _asleep_. 

“Mmm,” said John, shoving at him a bit. “You’re heavy.” His voice was sleep-slurred. 

Sherlock did what John wanted, even though it killed him, and rolled away from him. 

John turned slightly in his direction, tangling their feet together. “Also, we’re a mess,” he mumbled. 

And, just like that, for some insane reason, Sherlock found himself with tears in his eyes. He was an idiot. An _idiot_. “Yes,” he agreed, hoping he didn’t sound like he was crying. “We are.” He had never agreed with anything so fervently in his life. He pressed his lips against John’s head, hoping it was allowed. 

John hummed pleasantly, and Sherlock wasn’t sure if it was a response to the kiss or to the sentiment. “Should get a flannel,” said John. 

“I’ll get one in a minute,” said Sherlock. 

He did, too. John fell asleep and Sherlock forced himself out of bed, forced himself into the bathroom. He had no idea what time it was, but the flat was still quiet. He still had his watch on, but he felt like looking at it would break the spell of the night, and he didn’t want to break the spell. He didn’t want to go back to the real world until he had to. Until morning. He took off his watch and refused to look at himself in the mirror, and when he went back into his bedroom, he made sure to close the door firmly, which they had forgotten in their haste. 

When he got back into bed with John, he laid next to him, wide-eyed, and put a hand carefully on John’s chest, watched him sleep, felt him breathe, felt his heartbeat, until the very earliest light of dawn slanted over the bed. 

Then he rolled out of bed, pulled his dressing gown on, took a deep breath, and opened his bedroom door. Might as well face the lion sooner rather than later. Janine, as expected, was curled up on the sofa. She was not sleeping. She looked at him. 

“Not a single word,” he said, then retreated into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and braced himself by looking in the mirror. He looked at the sex-tugged mess of his hair, at the evidence of John’s hands in it. And then he washed all of it out. 

***

Janine made tea while Sherlock showered. She wrapped her hands around the mug and waited at the kitchen table and wondered if she should say anything at all. She thought she should. Because she wanted Sherlock to say, _Oh, it was lovely, we talked and it turns out he’s loved me all along, isn’t that splendid?_ But she highly doubted they’d talked. It seemed like far too healthy a thing for John Watson and Sherlock Holmes to do when it came to their relationship. They preferred to flail around like bulls in the delicate china shop of what they had. 

Sherlock hesitated in the hallway when he exited the bathroom, glancing toward his closed bedroom door.

“I assume he’s still sleeping,” Janine said, because she hadn’t heard a sound from Sherlock’s bedroom. 

Sherlock walked into the kitchen and picked up his cup of tea where Janine had left it on the counter. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Janine. 

“No,” said Sherlock, shortly. “Wasn’t that evidenced by my saying that you weren’t to say a single word?” Sherlock stalked out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. 

Janine sighed and looked down at her tea. 

Then Sherlock stalked back in. “Why should you be disapproving?” he hissed at her, clearly keeping his voice down for John’s sake. 

“Because I don’t want to see him break your heart.”

“He isn’t. I had my eyes wide open—”

“I doubt that,” Janine snapped, suddenly. “Because you never do when it comes to him. Ever. That’s how a world-class assassin managed to sneak up on you in the first place.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, clearly furious. “He’s grieving, and he went momentarily mad with needing to _not_ feel sad, to feel a little bit alive, and I let him because I wanted one bloody night where I could pretend that I was the one he’d wanted all along. I know exactly how wrong that was of me, so I don’t need your lectures. Trust me, Janine. _Wide open_.”

Furious not at her but at _himself_ , Janine realized, and took a shaky breath. “Oh, Sherlock,” she said. 

“Don’t _pity_ me,” bit out Sherlock. “I’d rather you condemn me than pity me. Do you know what this was supposed to be?” His hand waved around the kitchen, a gesture too vague for her to determine what he was referring to. 

“What?” she asked, slowly, trying to guess what he was talking about. 

“You, moving in here, being here, judging my life as if your life isn’t so much of a mess that you’ve sunk to the point of sleeping in the borrowed bed of a man who proposed to you entirely so that he could catch a blackmailer. Do you know what _that_ was supposed to be?”

Janine set her jaw and said, “What was it supposed to be, Sherlock?”

“ _Temporary_ ,” spat out Sherlock, and stormed down the stairs and out the door, slamming it for good measure. 

Bloody sodding stupid idiots, Janine thought, angrily. She was going to knock both of their heads together. 

Janine stood, scraping her chair back, and heard the shower go on in the bathroom. Aha. And there was the other ridiculous coward she was living with. Grief was one thing, yes. But grief didn’t mean he could use Sherlock that way. Use the way Sherlock _felt_. The way Sherlock felt about John Watson was so absurdly _pure_ , so worshipful and adoring, and to have that cast in your direction and to just _use_ it... And to have Sherlock feel that _he_ was the one who had used it, because he had wanted one night and he hadn’t cared what terms had come with that night… Because Sherlock had wanted one night where John Watson didn’t make him feel like the second choice, the runner-up, and Sherlock Holmes was on John Watson’s side, so Janine was solidly on Sherlock Holmes’s. 

So when John walked out of the bathroom, clearly trying to wrap himself in some shred of dignity, Janine immediately chucked a book at his head. 

He dodged, because he was a soldier who knew how to fight and her aim was terrible and didn’t even come close to his head. 

But he did blink at her in astonishment. “What the hell…?” he said. 

“No,” said Janine, firmly, furiously. “You don’t do this, do you hear me?”

John tipped his head, eyes narrowing, and Janine knew now why Sherlock had always seemed to feel like John was his avenging angel, because if you thought John was on your side then you would feel confident that no one would ever want to cross him. “Sorry, do I need to ask your permission regarding my sex life now?”

Janine ignored him. “You don’t get him back until I can be sure you won’t break his heart. Because you did it once before and you’ve never even _noticed_.” 

Proving her point, John said, “I never broke his heart.”

“You left him for a woman who _killed_ him, John.” 

“I _never_ left him,” John denied, shouting it across the sitting room at her. 

Janine crossed her arms and said dryly, “Didn’t seem like you stuck with him. Certainly you left an empty bedroom upstairs that he never got over, and an empty chair that pained him so much he had to _move it out of his sight_.”

“That’s not fair,” said John. “He left me first. And he came back and never even _apologized_. Did you know that? What was I supposed to do? I had a _life_.”

“Yeah,” Janine agreed. “A life that wasn’t him.”

“Right,” said John, tightly. “I had a wife and I had a child and now I have neither.”

“I know,” said Janine. “And I’m so sorry about that. I really am. I feel terrible for you. I can only imagine how… But I don’t want Sherlock to be your consolation prize. You have no idea the power you hold over him. You can shatter him with a single glance. All you have to do is look the right way at something and Sherlock would literally destroy his life to get it for you. And you have missed all of that about him. Somehow you have always missed all of that. He gave you his heart and you didn’t do a very good job with it.” 

“He didn’t… He broke my heart first,” John pointed out. 

“Yeah. He did. And then he spent a long time in penance for that. So it’s penance time. You don’t get him as a stopgap until you can find the next Mrs. Watson. You don’t get him until I think that you want him forever.” 

John gave her a disbelieving look. “So you’re going to make him choose between us?”

“No.” Janine shook her head. “He’d choose you. I’ve never imagined otherwise, ever. And this is why I don’t trust you yet: because you’re still getting it wrong. You think you could ever have a rival in his heart? You can’t. You lost him and you made yourself move on, so you think he must have done the same thing. But he doesn’t work that way. He’ll never move on from you. He’s never even wanted to. Not really. I’ve been here, the whole time, and he lives and he laughs but a piece of him is always on hold because that’s the piece of him that’s missing you. I want him to have you, John, because he will _never stop_ missing you. That’s what I’ve learned about him. But I can’t have him have only half of you this time. He should have all of you. The two of you have this rare and beautiful thing, this once-in-a-lifetime thing, this thing the rest of us spend all of our lives looking for. You two fell right into it, and ever since you’ve been doing your best to destroy it. And I won’t let you. Not this time. You have to get it right. You can’t break his heart.”

John stared at her for a long moment before demanding, flatly, “Who made you the guardian of Sherlock Holmes’s heart?”

Janine looked back evenly. She replied, “You did.” 

***

John stormed out on his way to work, and Janine thought she was two-for-two with angering her flatmates, and wasn’t that just the beginnings of a brilliant day? 

Sherlock arrived back around lunchtime, and Janine was surprised to see him because she’d thought he’d have avoided her for as long as possible. 

But he said, when he walked in, “What did you say to John?” and Janine realized he’d come back entirely to determine how much damage control he’d have to do. 

“Have you spoken to John?” asked Janine carefully. 

“No,” snapped Sherlock. “Of course not. I’m giving John his space.”

Idiot, thought Janine. “Can I give you advice that I know you’re going to hate?”

“No,” said Sherlock. “Did you say anything to John? And, if so, what did you say? Quickly now.”

Janine said, “You need to have it out with John.”

“There’s nothing to have out with John,” Sherlock denied impatiently. 

“Yes, there is.”

“No, there isn’t. This conversation is going nowhere. Can you just answer my question?”

“He hurt you,” said Janine. 

Sherlock answered so readily that Janine knew he must have thought and thought and thought about this. “I hurt myself.” 

“The two of you are the most poorly adjusted individuals I’ve ever met. You deserve each other,” declared Janine. 

After a beat, Sherlock said primly, “Thank you.”

“He has no idea, you know.”

“Yes, well, John frequently has no idea.” Sherlock paused. “No idea about what?”

“That you love him. How _much_ you love him.”

Sherlock stared at her. Sherlock said, “Yes, he does. I’ve told him.”

“You’ve said, ‘I love you, John’?”

“Don’t be daft. Why would I say that? That would put him in a difficult position; it would put him on the spot. I’ve told him, and he doesn’t feel the same way, and so we’ve agreed to…not say it out loud. It’s…kinder.”

“You think you’ve told him. He doesn’t know. Not really.”

“He _knows_ , Janine. I…I gave him the world’s most perfect wedding. I made sure he got back together with Mary. I tried to make sure he could stay with Mary forever by shooting Magnusson. I tried to give him the wife and child he chose and wanted. The only place I failed was that I couldn’t control death—”

Janine shook her head. “He doesn’t realize you did all that out of love. Not the kind of love you’re talking about.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her. “He doesn’t realize that I forgave his wife for killing me entirely because she was _his wife_?” 

“No. Sherlock, he’s a bit of an idiot. I hate to tell you this, but: You love an idiot.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for taking this journey with me, everyone! When the idea for this fic took hold of me, I couldn't think of anything else and wrote it in a burst, but then, uncharacteristically, I kept re-writing bits and pieces of it, adding more, more, more. It was a tricky fic for me, because the season left us in a tricky spot, and thank you so much for all of your comments, all of which were so helpful in figuring out how to make this fic better. You all helped me write this fic!

Chapter Eight

John was having a terrible day. Which was a shame because he’d had a pretty damn spectacular night. 

Which was why he was having a terrible day. 

His head ached, and the patients never ended, and John’s thoughts made him dizzy, made him nauseated, made him want to track Sherlock down and pin him into place and shout at him until he was hoarse about all the things Sherlock had apparently never told him, if Janine was to be believed. 

He had broken Sherlock’s heart when he married Mary. But Sherlock had never _said_ that. And how had John been supposed to know Sherlock’s heart had been involved, ever, at all, in any of it? Sherlock had faked his death by leaping off of a building in front of him and then had _lived without him for two years_. John would never have been able to do that. John had only lived two years without Sherlock because Sherlock had forced him to. John could barely live one month without Sherlock when Sherlock was around. Mary had noticed that, had said that he got progressively more snappish the longer he went without him. 

Janine thought he had broken Sherlock’s heart when he’d married Mary. And John had had no idea. And John sat and looked at patient after patient and just could not make up his mind if he still would have married Mary if he’d _known_. If he’d known that he would kiss Sherlock and Sherlock would kiss him back the way Sherlock had kissed him back. 

Because John had never expected that. John, who had wondered for so long what Sherlock’s mouth felt like when kissed, if it would soften out of the moue of proud deductions, the way it did when John made him smile, when John made him laugh. John had wondered that for so very long without ever thinking that he would find out, the way one might wonder what it felt like to walk on the moon. 

He had kissed Sherlock in the kitchen the night before because he’d been feeling reckless, like he had nothing left to lose. He had lost a wife and a child and a future, but he had not lost Sherlock. And somehow, even after everything else, there had still been hope in that. Sherlock, who had always been the person on the planet who had made him feel most _alive_ when he otherwise most felt like he was dying. And he had kissed him, desperate to taste that aliveness, to feel it light him up the way it lit Sherlock up, and he had never expected Sherlock, in ten thousand years, to ever kiss him back, to ever, even for a heartbeat, want him _that way_. 

And what had John done with that revelation? Well, he had shagged Sherlock, of course. He had let him say unbelievably amazing things, and had had no idea how to say anything even half as meaningful, so he had said something completely inadequate and fallen asleep by Sherlock’s side and thought that in the morning everything would be brand new and life would begin all over again, misunderstandings cast aside. John had had only a vague idea of how it would work, but he had had a clear idea that it was going to be _lovely_. 

And instead Sherlock had disappeared and he’d got a book thrown at his head by Janine, as if he’d taken Sherlock to bed the way he would have taken any random warm, living person he met to bed. As if it hadn’t been a wild leap out of an airplane without a parachute. 

_All you have to do is look the right way at something and Sherlock would literally destroy his life to get it for you_ , said Janine’s voice in his head. And he had looked the right way at Mary. He had actually loved Mary. He really had. And he had married her because he had thought it would make him happy. And in the end it was an incontrovertible truth of his life that Mary had made him happy, but Mary made him happiest when there was Sherlock on the side. And that had never been true of Sherlock, John had never really needed anyone beside Sherlock, Sherlock had always been the single sun at the center of John’s orbit. And to admit that meant that he had been making so many mistakes for so many years that he had almost destroyed everything. 

_The two of you have this rare and beautiful thing, this once-in-a-lifetime thing, this thing the rest of us spend all of our lives looking for. You two fell right into it, and ever since you’ve been doing your best to destroy it._ He had broken Sherlock’s heart, Janine said. Sherlock couldn’t even bear to look at his _chair_ , Janine said. 

And it couldn’t be true. It _couldn’t_ be. If Sherlock had loved him like that surely he would have known. Surely he would have noticed. But Sherlock ran hot and cold with him. Sherlock was good at pretending to love people who he didn’t really care about it. Janine was a case in point. Sherlock could be cold and unfeeling and not even notice the level of destruction he was leaving in his path. That was Sherlock. 

And Sherlock had planned his wedding. Had shot a man who was blackmailing his wife. Had told him to forgive his wife for shooting him. Had planned the funeral of his wife and child without even flinching. Had taken him to Sussex and given him space to have a private breakdown and picked up the pieces when John was ready. Had kissed him back last night like John was the missing part of a chemical equation he’d been working on forever. Sherlock had said, in the darkness between them, utterly naked, _You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You utterly destroy me. You wreck me. I look at you and can’t breathe._

It was possible Sherlock loved him. No, that was wrong because John would have believed willingly anyone who had told him that Sherlock loved him. What John was spending an entire day of his life making sense of in his head was that Sherlock was apparently _in love with him_. Might have been in love with him all along. If John had known this earlier—But how would he had known it earlier? When Sherlock had never said?

Not that John had ever said anything to him, either. But he had thought it would be impossible for Sherlock to miss. Sherlock, who missed nothing. John had always assumed that Sherlock ignored it out of a desire to make their living arrangements—which Sherlock obviously liked—awkward. 

John felt like he could tear his hair out, like he was being torn in two directions, and why hadn’t Sherlock just stayed this morning to _talk_ to him? John took out his mobile once every few minutes to text him and had no idea what to write. _Can we talk?_ seemed ridiculous. _Why did you flee?_ sounded accusatory. _You have always been the only thing I can’t live without_ was accurate but terrifying to put into a text when he still didn’t know that Sherlock wouldn’t be bewildered by it, wouldn’t think that he wasn’t just saying mad things in a grief-stricken state. 

And he wasn’t, he realized. It wasn’t grief. For a while now Sherlock had been the only thing in his life that had _not_ been about grief. 

“There’s someone here demanding to see you, Dr. Watson,” hissed Penelope into his examining room. Penelope. Who hadn’t known his sad history, because he’d switched surgeries precisely so it wouldn’t be known, and who had asked him out for coffee days ago. And John had said no. And he hadn’t said no out of respect for Mary’s memory. He hadn’t said no because he wasn’t _ready_. He’d said no because he was already in a relationship. 

John blinked at her dazedly as the realization finally dawned on him. Janine was utterly wrong. He wasn’t looking for the next Mrs. Watson. He had no interest in looking any further than Baker Street for anything else ever again. 

“Dr. Watson?” prompted Penelope. 

“Yeah,” said John, coming back to himself with effort. His hand fingered the mobile in his pocket. Text Sherlock, he thought. Say, _You’re my next Mrs. Watson_. Oh my God, he was literally hysterical. “What did you say?”

“There’s someone here asking for you.”

John didn’t dare to hope. “Who?” he asked, slowly. 

“He’s—” There was muffled shouting from down the hallway, and Penelope glanced over her shoulder before turning back to John. “He’s causing a ruckus.”

Oh, God, thought John. Because it had to be Sherlock. Only Sherlock would _sneak out of his own bedroom_ and then show up in a strop at John’s surgery because of it. 

“Thanks,” said John, and walked past her and down the hallway, trying to determine what he was going to say. _I love you_ seemed about right. 

And yet not at all appropriate to the scene John came upon. 

Sherlock was saying, “It’s just that it’s ridiculous for you not to have realized that this baby must have been another man’s,” and a woman with a baby was crying, and a man was furiously demanding whose it was, and a teenager who happened to also be there and apparently knew the couple said, “I bet it’s Tommy’s,” and this caused more fury and shouting. John stepped in front of the man just as he looked about ready to launch himself onto Sherlock, getting a glancing blow for his trouble. 

Which did not put John in a good mood. Couldn’t Sherlock just _not cause trouble_ for long enough for John to sort through all this confusion? John glared at Sherlock. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m _deducing_ ,” Sherlock spat out. 

“Outside,” John ordered. “ _Now_.” Whatever John was going to say to him, it wasn’t going to happen _here_. 

Sherlock went with a swirl of his coat, and John left the mess for the cheating wife to clean up, because he wasn’t in the mood. 

John meant to start with something nice, but he was bad at this, so he started with, “What the _bloody hell_ was all of that—”

Sherlock whirled on him. “How could you not have realized?”

John blinked, startled by how truly furious Sherlock looked and suddenly ashamed. Because if Sherlock was talking about what John thought he might be talking about then John had spent the entire morning asking himself that same question. “Realized what?” he asked cautiously. 

“How could you not have realized that this entire time, everything I’ve done, _everything_ I’ve done, since the moment you told me what you wanted, was to _give you what you wanted_? Why did you think I was doing it? Did you think I was doing it for _fun_?”

Yup, definitely the same thing. John swallowed thickly. 

“Mary,” ranted Sherlock, not noticing John’s silence. “The wedding. The baby. Magnusson. You told me you wanted it, and I gave it to you, and you never even said _thank you_.”

And suddenly John was furious. Sherlock had given him all of that, but Sherlock had never once actually _asked_ him what he’d wanted. If John had known that Sherlock cared enough to be trying to determine that then John would have bloody started to suspect that Sherlock cared more than John had ever thought. “When did I tell you I wanted it?” John shouted at him. 

“In the subway carriage!” Sherlock shouted back. 

“The what?”

“The subway carriage! I said, ‘If I hadn’t come back you’d still have a future with Mary,’ and you said, ‘I know.’”

God, that long ago? John reeled backward in his memory, pulling up bits and pieces of being trapped in a subway carriage with Sherlock, convinced he was going to die. He had not been doing the clearest thinking of his life, and his recollection of those moments was mostly about what Sherlock had said and done, not himself. He must have said what Sherlock had said he said; Sherlock’s memory was flawless. “All right,” he said, not quite getting the point. 

“You wanted her. She was your priority. I exposed that. So I gave her to you. Even though it meant that I lost you—”

That pushed a sensitive button on John, because this was a mess, all of it, but it wasn’t entirely of John’s creation. John shook his head. “Oh, no. You don’t get to act like _you_ lost _me_ first. Because that isn’t how it happened.”

“I know! And I’m sorry! I did a terrible thing to you, so I gave you Mary. I gave you your space with her, I protected her at every cost, I did everything I could think of to ensure that you could have her, because you wanted her and because I thought…She wasn’t supposed to do terrible things to you. I wanted to give you that, a person like that, a person who wasn’t me because you didn’t want me. And I did it for you even though it _literally killed me_ —” 

“When did I ever tell you that I didn’t want you? You’re the one who turned around and immediately replaced me with your best friend Janine—” snapped John, and knew he sounded petty and jealous and _stupid_ because what did Janine have to do with this, really, except for how much it had cut John to the quick to see her in his appointed position in Baker Street. And Sherlock had _hurt_ him, in so many ways over the years; this had not been one-sided. 

Sherlock stared at him. “Are you jealous of Janine? How can you possibly be jealous of Janine? You _married_ somebody else and I wasn’t allowed to be jealous. Oh, no, I had to pick out dresses and write you a sodding romantic song and pretend I wasn’t dying every single moment, and now you’re all upset because after you left I let someone else make me laugh once or twice. I thought that was what I was supposed to do! It’s what you did! And I made sure I didn’t push you, I made sure that you would never feel torn or conflicted. I took whatever you were willing to give me and I never complained. Never once. I _never complained_. I planned a _wedding_ for you, and I _never complained_. How did you not realize? What did you think? Did you think that I was suddenly just a _nice person_? Did that make any sense?”

Sherlock _hadn’t even thought they were best friends_ , how was John supposed to know that was because Sherlock had thought they were _more_? John had just thought he was trying to make up for everything, not… “I thought you were being a good friend—” managed John. 

“I’m a terrible friend, John!” exclaimed Sherlock. “And, anyway, I made you forgive your wife for _killing me_. You didn’t think that went beyond just ‘good friend’?”

John thought of rushing into Magnusson’s office to find the blood seeping insidiously out of Sherlock’s body, soaking his designer shirt; remembered leaning over him and pressing it powerlessly back into his body; willing him to keep breathing, keep breathing, keep breathing; shoving his way into an ambulance with him and talking to him, endlessly, on the off-chance that John begging him not to leave him again might be the one thing that would keep Sherlock fighting. And it had been a ridiculous idea, but suddenly John wondered if his subconscious, gaining traction in the panic, had known all along the truth about the two of them, had known all along that John’s voice might be the most important thing Sherlock had needed just then. “You said she saved your life,” John said, and he thought suddenly that he might cry, because that one moment, that _one decision_ on Sherlock’s part, had changed the entire path of their lives. “You said it was a surgical gunshot wound—”

“She _shot me_ , John. I _almost died_. I _got lucky_. And you—”

John pushed at the sorrow, shifted it into anger. Because a piece of him had known all along that Mary hadn’t really cared one way or the other what had happened to Sherlock, because Mary had put a _bullet_ into his _chest_ , which was not a good place for a bullet to be, as John knew from bloody good experience. Mary had killed Sherlock, and then John had taken Mary’s side, and Sherlock had _caused_ this. “That is not what you said,” John bit out at him. “That is never what you told me. You told me it was all fine because I choose inappropriate people to love because there’s something wrong with me—”

“There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect. You choose inappropriate people to love. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. That makes you _perfect_. Because I thought that for a little while you might possibly have chosen _me_. Do you know how amazing that made you? That I could imagine, for even the briefest of moments, that if I’d realized it sooner, if I’d done less to make you hate me, you might actually have chosen me? _You_? Chosen _me_? You love inappropriate people. I don’t know why you ever thought it was a bad thing. It’s an amazing thing. You almost chose me. That was the closest I’ve ever come to someone actually wanting _me_. How could I have denied you, after the gift of that, the person you actually wanted? The person who was giving you a child and this normal life you thought you wanted and—”

“The normal life I thought I wanted,” said John, dully, his mind whirling with everything. 

“Yes,” agreed Sherlock, hesitantly. 

“You knew,” John realized. “You knew all along that Mary wasn’t going to make me happy.”

Sherlock was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “No. I didn’t. I hoped I was wrong. I hoped she would make you the happiest person on the planet. She was what you wanted. I wanted the thing you wanted to make you happy. If she didn’t then everything I did would have been a waste.”

“Why would you do any of that?” asked John desperately, feeling the weight of all the choices he hadn’t got to make because Sherlock had made them for him. “I never asked you to— How could I ever begin to—”

“You didn’t have to ask me. The point was that you never had to ask me.” Sherlock hesitated, then took a deep breath, as if he was about to plunge himself underwater. “The point was that I was in love with you,” he said in a rush. 

John listened to that. Oh, how John listened to that. He had flung himself out of an airplane without a parachute, and it was possible Sherlock had just handed him one. John said carefully, “Was?”

“Am. I am. In love with you. How can you possibly not know this? After all this time. John Watson, I am the person who loves you most in the world.”

John rocked backward a little with the impact of the words, lost all ability to speak, stared at Sherlock for so long that Sherlock’s expression faltered. “So that’s that,” he said with a little shrug, as if the whole thing had been nothing but an astonishingly good deduction. “Just thought you should know.”

“Sherlock,” said John firmly, and reached out to hold Sherlock’s collar, keep him in place. 

Sherlock looked down at him, looking wary, as if he didn’t know if he was going to be kissed or punched. 

“You need to stand right here and let me think of exactly what I want to say to you,” John told Sherlock’s chin, because he couldn’t look into Sherlock’s eyes right at that moment. “Because I am not good at this stuff,” he reminded him. 

“Just tell me you don’t hate me,” said Sherlock in a gulp. 

“Why should anything that you just said to me make me hate you?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s you. And I make terrible mistakes with you. I make the worst mistakes.”

John thought of everything his life would have been if Sherlock hadn’t jumped off St. Bart’s. Would they have ended up here? Or would they have never got here? Had they needed the tragedy of his lost wife and daughter, the driving force of Janine, all of Sherlock’s built-up pain to suddenly lash out in a rage that would let him finally insist that John see what he had been refusing to see? John could see it suddenly, could see the two of them living out the rest of their lives together in Baker Street, no tragedy and no grief and no loss but no stunning declaration of love, either, no night in the darkness when John had felt a rightness he had never felt before in his life, like Sherlock had been put on the planet for him and he had finally thought to grab hold and take him. 

John took a very deep breath and focused on Sherlock’s coat collar in his hands. “You didn’t give me the chance last time. You took it from me. You never _told_ me this. You never _asked_ me.”

“I didn’t want you to have to tell me no,” said Sherlock helplessly. “And I wanted…I just wanted _you_. Whatever that was, whatever you could give me. John, it doesn’t matter—”

“Shh,” John said, and finally looked up at him. “I’m trying to tell you, because you didn’t let me tell you last time: I choose _you_. I will always _choose you_.”

Sherlock stared at him, his eyes very wide. It was bright outside, and his pupils were tiny dots in the middle of irises that John had never been able to classify. John was going to spend the rest of his life, he thought, marveling at the fact that he had never realized the way Sherlock’s eyes _looked_ at him. 

And there was so much between them, so much tragedy and so much misunderstanding and so much mutual hurt. John tried to keep his voice steady when he said, “Can we start over? You and me. Can we wipe everything clean, forget everything we’ve done to each other? Can we just be—”

“Sherlock Holmes,” said Sherlock, and held out his hand. 

John looked down at it, and slowly, hesitantly, took hold of it. “John Watson,” he said. 

“I’ve got this lovely flat, Dr. Watson,” said Sherlock. 

“How do you know I’m a doctor?” said John. 

“You’re wearing a stethoscope.”

John laughed. He couldn’t help it. He laughed, and Sherlock smiled at him in response, his eyes bright, like there was nothing in the world better than John Watson laughing. Everything in his universe was shiny and new, and Sherlock looked at him like _that_ , and John loved him with a desperation that he couldn’t bear. Sherlock, who had been his unchanging point, even when John had thought him dead. It had always, always, always been _Sherlock_. Everything, every beat of his heart. How had he been so _stupid_? 

John said, “No flat.”

Sherlock, quizzical, lifted his eyebrows. “No?”

“At least, not until I take you to dinner first. Have some standards.”

Sherlock smiled, a corner of his mouth turning up. “I don’t eat.”

“Tea, then,” suggested John. 

“I have a feeling you’re really rather excellent at making tea,” said Sherlock. 

John hugged him suddenly, throwing his arms around his neck and pressing his nose into the soft curls behind his ear. “I love you,” he said, muffled against Sherlock. “You tosser, why didn’t you tell me so much sooner that I _love_ you?”

“I’m an idiot,” said Sherlock, and hugged him tightly, kept him close. 

John squeezed his eyes shut and said, “Tell me you’ll never leave me again.”

“Never. Well, I’m shortly going to leave you to finish seeing to your patients, but I expect you to come and see that flat with me. Quite centrally located, I think we’ll just be able to afford it between the two of us.”

“I think, between the two of us, we could do just about anything,” said John. 

“Just so,” said Sherlock, and John heard the smile in his voice. 

“I will never leave you, either,” John said. “You need to demand that of me. Make me promise never to leave you.”

There was a moment of silence. “Promise me you’ll never leave again.”

“Never,” said John, fervently. “I will choose you, every single day, for the rest of our lives. You. Just you.”

Sherlock took a deep shaky breath and held him and said, “Tell me, do you happen to have a truly terribly written blog? I’ve grown used to my flatmates having truly terribly written blogs.”

***

“How’s the new place?” asked Sherlock, sliding into the seat at the bar next to her, and Janine was almost amused by this attempt at chit-chat. 

“You ought to come over and see it. I had a housewarming party and you were a no-show.”

“See how you called it a housewarming _party_?” pointed out Sherlock, with a little grimace. “Anyway, I’m still protesting the fact that you moved out. You didn’t _have_ to move out. Especially when the flat was finally a two-bedroom flat again.”

“Ah, but my work as Cupid was complete. I go where the wind takes me, you know, pushing together stubborn, idiotic people, never finding one of my own. Speaking of.” Janine bumped her shoulder against his playfully. “Come on. Pick me a live one here, Sherl.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and slid a piece of paper across the bar to her. “No need. Ring that number.” Sherlock stood. 

Janine looked at the number. “Whose is it?”

“I called in a favor from my brother to get that,” said Sherlock sternly, “so you’d better appreciate the sacrifice.”

“Okay.” Janine looked up at him, intrigued. “But whose number is it?”

“Be sure to stop by anytime. John says he’s never playing Wii with me again, and I can’t allow myself to get rusty.”

“Yeah,” agreed Janine, dazedly. “But whose number is this?”

Sherlock kissed her cheek. “It’s a thank you. For everything,” he said into her ear. Then he winked at her and left. 

***

_September 30, 2015_

_Operation Find Someone FANTASTIC: COMPLETE – FINISHED – OVER_

_Shezza totally outdid himself. And I’ve already been warned by Mike that to say anything more would be a violation of the Official Secrets Act._

_ Comments _

_It’s Prince Harry, isn’t it? –Mrs. Hudson_

_Official Secrets Act, Mrs. Hudson. –Shezza_

THE END.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Infinite Curse Of A Lonely Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1398271) by [Potrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potrix/pseuds/Potrix)




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